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CHE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

By-ACHMED ABDULLAH 






• • :x ■ ■ * ■ 

The 

Remittance -Woman 


BY 

ACHMED ABDULLAH 



GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC. 
1924 


©C1A778G65 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

COPYRIGHT, IQ22, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY IN THE 
UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 


THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 


First Edition 






•v\o 1 





CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I. A Dinner in China . . . 

II. The Vase of Tchou-fou-yao 

III. The Death of Liu Po-Yat . 

IV. A Lady in Jail .... 

V. Higginson, A. B. 

VI. The Temple of Horrors 

VII. “Death to the Foreigners!” 

VIII. “The Narrow-Footed One” 


IX. Journey's End 





















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THE 

REMITTANCE-WOMAN 



The Remittance-Woman 


CHAPTER I 

A DINNER IN CHINA 

I SAY, old bean!” Marie Campbell addressed a 
long, rather limp youth with a pleasantly in¬ 
nocuous face. 

“Wha-at, old thing?” he asked languidly. 

“Feel energetic?” 

“Quite.” 

“Good! I’ll shoot you a game of cowboy pool 
before lunch.” 

“Stakes?” 

“You bet,” said Marie Campbell. “The drinks 
and a fifty-spot.” 

As Tom Van Zandt rose to follow her into the 
billiard-room of the country club at the Maine re¬ 
sort, a cough she knew well came from the farther 
door and caused her to turn. 

“Yes, father dear?”—with a slightly martyred 
air. 

“I want a few words with you, Marie.” 

She walked up to him. 

“What is the trouble?” she asked. 

“I was in the next room. I heard what you’ve 
been saying to that young jackanapes of a Tom Van 
Zandt.” 


2 


THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“Dad, that sort of talk happens to be the fad 
just now in our gang-” 

“Gang?” 

“Set—if you prefer. Why, Muriel Brewster al¬ 
ways calls her father ‘darling old turnip.’ ” 

“I don’t care what she calls him! I don’t care 
what anybody calls—oh—anybody,” he finished 
weakly. 

“What’s all the fuss about, then?” 

“Your lolling around here with Tom- 

“Nothing much wrong with him except his brain 
and the color of his socks, dad-” 

“And,” her father interrupted, “asking him to 
shoot you a game of cowboy pool. The drinks and 
a fifty-spot! It isn’t becoming a girl. And”— 
crescendo—“that isn’t all!” 

“No?”. 

Her voice was as cold as ice. She was fond of 
her father, and he of her, in a curiously impersonal 
manner. But both were impatient and headstrong. 
For a number of years—Mrs. Anthony Campbell 
had died in giving birth to Marie, and there was a 
challenging silence whenever the girl mentioned her 
mother—father and daughter had lived in the un¬ 
comfortable relations existing between two intimate¬ 
ly connected persons who realize that the atmos¬ 
phere about them is surcharged with innumerable 
little explosive atoms. 

“Darn it all!” her father exclaimed. “You’ve 
lost all your feminine sweetness and restraint. You 
talk like a man, behave like a man, smoke like a 
man, and”—he wound up accusingly, furiously, yet 
somehow triumphantly—“you make debts like a 
man! Here!” And he produced a thick sheaf of 
varicolored papers. 

“Bills?” she inquired, bored. 

“I’ve made a little compilation of them for your 





A DINNER IN CHINA 3 

benefit, young lady.” He took a typewritten sheet 
from his pocket. “Here!” 

“Surely you can afford to pay it, can’t you, dad?” 

“Of course. That isn’t the question.” 

“What is?” 

“The sort of stuff you spend my money on. For 
instance, I don’t mind this seven hundred dollars 
for frocks and frills and all that. Nor this—Mad¬ 
ame—oh—Hickamadoodle’s bill for a dozen hats. 
But—look at this—and this—and that!” 

She did. 

“Polo-mallets, one hundred and seventy-five dol¬ 
lars. English hunting-saddle, ninety-five. Yes?” 
She looked up questioningly. 

“Go on. There!” He pointed at another de¬ 
tailed row of items. 

“But,” she rejoined mildly, “you told me only the 
other day that I could buy myself a new outfit-” 

“A woman’s! Not a man’s! Breeches! Ciga¬ 
rettes ! Poker-chips! ’ ’ 

“What are you going to do about it, dad?” 

“I’m going to give you your choice. Do you 
want to be a girl, and behave like one, or be treated 
like a man?” 

“You mean that, dad?” 

“Absolutely!” 

“All right,” she said. “In the future you may 
treat me as if I were a man.” 

“You realize what you are choosing?” 

“Quite, dad.” 

“You are willing to take the same chance I took 
when I was a young chap?” 

“Yes.” 

“Marie,” he said, “I accept your choice. You 
will start your new career at once. To-morrow we 
go back to town. I’ll give you a check there. I’ll 
make it a thousand——” 




4 


THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“Why a thousand?” she drawled. 

“To start you in life.” 

“Did you say you’d give me the same chance you 
had when you went out into the world?” 

“Yes. Well?”—as he saw her smile. 

“Dad,” she said slowly, “last year I went to Scot¬ 
land—and saw grandfather. He told me things 
about you—when you were a young man.” 

“What has all that to do with-” 

“Wait! He told me how irresponsible you 
had been for years after leaving college—how at 
last, in desperation, he asked you to leave 
Scotland for Scotland’s good. In fact, you came 
over to America as a remittance-man, didn’t 
you?” 

“I did. But—I did make good.” 

His thoughts roamed back down the vista of the 
gray, dead years—his impetuous youth, two terms 
at Oxford, expulsion on a number of charges. 
Scrapes, right and left. His father had sent him to 
America, and he had become a remittance-man. A 
thousand dollars every quarter, and it had never 
lasted more than a month—whisky, cards, dice, 
horses. And step by step he had drifted down the 
ladder until one day, suddenly, something like a col¬ 
ored ball of glass had shivered to pieces in his brain, 
had shown himself to himself in the naked, pitiless 
light of self-understanding. 

That was in the Northwest, not far from the 
Washington-British Columbia boundary-line. He 
was completely broke. But that day the little red 
wilderness gods had piped to him, and he had fol¬ 
lowed their call, across the boundary-line into Brit¬ 
ish Columbia, north, up along the Michel Creek— 
to find what he might. He had trekked on foot, 
finding occasional work in mines and lumber camps. 
Then one day, clearing the snow from the ground 




A DINNER IN CHINA 


5 

to make a fire, he had found a little crumbly, black 
powder—coal! 

He had been too poor to buy dynamite. And so 
Jack Henderson, the Crow’s Nest Pass storekeeper, 
who was nearly as poor as himself, grub-staked him 
for all he could. He had worked with pick and 
shovel all that winter into the summer. But he had 
found his first true vein and to-day Campbell & 
Henderson—the same Jack Henderson of the 
Crow’s Nest Pass store—were the biggest coal op¬ 
erators in the Northwest, solidly rich, with offices 
and town houses in New York and country places 
in Maine and on Long Island. 

Since then his life had been a steady routine of 
work and success. He had interrupted it only once, 
a little over twenty-two years ago, when he had 
gone on a trip round the world, and had spent over 
a year in China, whence he had returned, white- 
haired, rather bitter, with a little baby girl in his 
arms. Yes—he had curtly told Jack Henderson 
and his other friends;—he had married in China. 
And—yes—his wife had died in childbirth. 

To-day the beginnings of his fortune seemed very 
far away; very far away, almost unreal, seemed 
the days when he had been a remittance-man. 

But he was an honest man. 

u Yes,” he said to his daughter; “once I was a re¬ 
mittance-man, and my father sent me a thousand 
dollars every three months.” 

“Very well,” she went on coolly. “You prom¬ 
ised me the same chance you had. Only—make 
it fifteen hundred a quarter instead of a thou¬ 
sand.” 

“Fifteen hundred? Why-” 

“High cost of living,” she explained. 

“All right,” he gave in finally. “Fifteen hun¬ 
dred a quarter.” He looked at her narrowly, to 



6 


THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


see if she were bluffing. “Of course on the same 
conditions which my father-” 

“Yes,” she interrupted. “I’ll get my remittances 
just as long as I stay away from America-” 

“Any time you want to come back—and behave 
like a girl-” 

“I know. But I’m really tickled to get away. 
Always been crazy to go to China.” 

“China?” He looked up, startled. 

“Yes, dad. I was born there, wasn’t I? What 
other reason could there be—except perhaps in¬ 
herited WanderlustT* 

“Yes—yes.” An expression of suspicion left his 
face. 

“Well—there you are! I shall start this week.” 

“Very well.” He lit a cigar. “By the way—re¬ 
member that little Chinese vase you had ever since 
you were a baby?” 

“You mean that brittle thing with the two funny, 
wriggly gold dragons?” 

“That’s the one. Take it along. And”— 
he coughed, evidently searching for words—“don’t 
show it to people—and don’t talk about it—unless” 
—he hesitated—“unless you absolutely have to.” 

“But—what-” 

“I am Scotch.” He gave a forced laugh. “And 
so you must forgive my Scotch superstitions. But 
—is it a promise?” 

“About the vase?” 

“Yes.” 

“All right, dad. I promise.” 

All this had happened over six months before, 
and now Marie Campbell was in her hotel at Can¬ 
ton, at the edge of the Shameen, the Foreign Con¬ 
cession, with a view, in the distance, of White 
Cloud Mountain. She wondered what she should 
do. Of course she could cable to her father, and 






A DINNER IN CHINA 7 

the reply would be immediate and generous. But 
it was not alone her inherited pride which prevented 
her from doing so. It was also that, somehow, 
even in these few months, China had got beneath 
her skin in a strange way. For, in her non-thinking 
moments, there was always about her a curious im¬ 
pression that she belonged here. Yet—what was 
there for her to do? 

Two weeks before, her quarterly check had come. 
She had spent every cent of it in the gorgeous silk 
and jade shops near the Gate of Eternal Purity. 
And here was Liu Po-Yat, the Manchu chamber¬ 
maid, with a note from Monsieur Paul Pailloux, the 
hotel manager, asking Miss Campbell to settle her 
bill before ten o’clock the next morning, or- 

“Or?” 

She turned to Liu Po-Yat, who looked down at 
her from her great height, her handsome face in¬ 
scrutable beneath the glory of her raven-black hair. 

“Miss Campbell,” she said in perfect English, “I 
see no necessity for the ‘or.’ ” 

“Don’t you?” 

Marie Campbell was surprised that Liu Po-Yat, 
who, ever since she had come to the Great Eastern 
Hotel to live, had not opened her mouth except to 
answer in gliding Mongol syllables to the few Chin¬ 
ese words—enough to ask for fresh towels and 
ice-water—Marie had managed to pick up, was able 
to speak English—fluent, careful English, not the 
pidgin of the river coolies. 

“No,” Liu Po-Yat replied to her question. “You 
see—there is Mr. Moses d’Acosta-” 

“Look here-” 

“Mr. d’Acosta is waiting for you downstairs in 
the salon,” Liu Po-Yat finished imperturbably. 

Mr. Moses d’Acosta had seen the light of ^day 
fifty years earlier in Constantinople in a crooked, 





8 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

dim street a stone’s throw from the Yedi Koule Ka- 
poussi, the Gate of the Seven Towers. He spoke 
Turkish as fluently as he spoke Arabic and French 
and English and German and the Levantine lingua 
franca. But his native tongue was an archaic 
Spanish, which he used, even in preference to He¬ 
brew, when he chanted his prayers to Jahveh, the 
God of Abraham and of Jacob. For he was a 
“Spaniol,” a descendant of one of those noble 
Spanish-Jewish families who were driven from their 
native land when the last of the Moorish caliphs 
went down under the straight swords of Castile and 
Leon and who migrated, some to Morocco and Tu¬ 
nis, others to Turkey. 

To-day he was one of the richest men in the Le¬ 
vant, with interests that reached from Peking to 
London. He was a typical Jew in so far as he was 
both a doer and a dreamer, rarest, most irresisti¬ 
ble of combinations. 

Marie had met him first a week before in a 
mazed bazaar near the Temple of the Five Hun¬ 
dred Lohans and, the same night, in the hotel 
lobby. She had noticed him immediately. No¬ 
body could help noticing him. Then, only two days 
ago, she had met him again, as she came from a 
Chinese shop where, with utter recklessness, she had 
spent a hundred dollars, the tail-end of her quar¬ 
terly remittance, for an exquisite vase of Ning-yan 
porcelain. The shop being in the slums of Canton, 
a rabble of Gilyak Tartars, former soldiers, dis¬ 
charged since the Chinese revolution and holding 
the “foreign devils” responsible for the downfall 
of the Manchu dynasty, had followed her and were 
pelting her with mud when Moses d’Acosta swung 
round the corner, dispersed the mob at the point of 
his revolver, and had seen her home to the hotel, 
where he, too, lived. 


A DINNER IN CHINA 


9 

On the way there he had talked to her—at first 
about impersonal matters, then, suddenly, he had 
made a remark which had surprised her. 

“Good ship—the Empress of Malaysia” 

“Oh, you know that-” 

“That you took the C. P. R. liner to Hongkong 
—and then came up here on the British Navigation 
ship? Of course.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Curiosity is my middle name, I suppose.” And, 
suddenly, disconcertingly, “Why did you decide all 
at once to come to China?” 

“Oh—I—” She had found herself uneasy and 
nonplussed, and when, back at the hotel, he had 
asked her to dine with him that very night, she had 
been conscious of her desire to accept, although her 
lips, almost mechanically, had formed the glib white 
lie: “Thank you, but I’d rather not—headache, 
you know.” 

“Very well, Miss Campbell,” he had replied. 
“Some other time.” And he had repeated ques- 
tioningly, “Some other time,” and had added, al¬ 
most in a whisper, “Our tastes are the same, you 
know.” 

“In what?” 

“In Chinese porcelain, don’t you think?” 

He had not even waited for her answer, but had 
walked away and, looking after him, she had seen 
him step up to and exchange greetings with an elder¬ 
ly, enormously stout Manchu dressed in brocaded 
silk. 

“Sun Yu-Wen, the famous Pekingese banker,” 
the desk clerk had told her in answer to her ques¬ 
tion. 

“Mr. d’Acosta is waiting for you down-stairs,” 
repeated Liu Po-Yat. “He has expressed to me his 



10 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

hope that you will approve of the dinner which he 
took the liberty of ordering.” 

“Dinner—you said he ordered?” Marie was 
thoroughly roused. 

“Gray molossol caviar as first course,” went on 
the Manchu woman. “He had noticed in the din¬ 
ing room that you are fond of it.” 

“I never had any caviar since I came here.” 

“No? Perhaps, then, on board ship.” 

“He wasn’t there.” 

“Somebody may have told him,” said the Manchu 
woman. “Anyway, it will be served to-night. He 
gets his own caviar direct from Astrakhan—through 
the courtesy of Prince Pavel Kokoshkine.” 

Suddenly, unreasoningly, the situation struck 
Marie as startlingly amusing. 

“Liu,” she asked, “far be it from me to butt into 
your private affairs. But —what do you know about 
molossol caviar? Hozv do you know? And who 
taught you to express your views in such ripping 
English, old dear?” 

The Manchu woman looked at her for a long 
time, silently, doubtingly. Then she seemed to 
make up her mind. 

“My father,” she said—and she said it as a New 
Yorker might mention that his people were Knicker¬ 
bockers, not boastingly, but as a simple statement of 
fact—“was the hereditary captain-general of the 
Seventh Manchu Banner Corps. He was a cousin- 
in-blood to the Son of Heaven, a nurhachi —an iron- 
capped prince. For years he was Chinese minister 
for the old Buddha, the dowager empress, in differ¬ 
ent European capitals. I was educated abroad. 
I am”—again she spoke unboastingly—“an aristo¬ 
crat.” 

“Oh, you are? And to-day you are—” She in¬ 
dicated the other’s neat uniform. 


A DINNER IN CHINA 


ii 


“To-day,” came the rejoinder, U I am still an 
aristocrat, still a cousin to the Son of Heaven.” 

“But the Son of Heaven has been deposed and 
imprisoned.” 

“Indeed?” 

Marie laughed. “Not a very sound believer in 
the Chinese republic, in lusty young Democracy, are 
you?” she asked. 

“Are you?” 

“What have I to do with China? I am an Amer¬ 
ican.” 

“Oh—yes”—the other gave a gliding smile—“I 
almost forgot.” 

Marie smiled back. She liked the other better 
and better. 

“Of course,” she said, “being a woman and an 
American, I am curious. Tell me—why didn’t you 
ask me to mind my own business?” 

“Because I trust you.” 

“Why do you trust me, a stranger?” 

“Perhaps I do not consider you altogether a 
stranger.” 

“Flattering, old dear!” 

“And perhaps,” continued the other, “it is just a 
woman’s whim.” 

“ ‘Sisters under the skin,’ eh? All right. Let’s 

stick together. But- Which reminds me —why 

Moses d’Acosta?” 

“He has money,” coolly replied Liu Po-Yat. 

But the other was not deceived.. 

“Now you’re giving me an Oriental half-truth. 
Of course he has the tin. But there are also other 
reasons why you want me to dine with him.” 

“Perhaps,” smiled Liu Po-Yat. 

“Very well. The main question is: Would you 
dine with him if you were me?” 

“If I had to.” Liu Po-Yat pointed to the man- 



12 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

ager’s dunning note. “Remember that you are a 
woman—and clever—and beautiful,” the Manchu 
added. She turned to the telephone. “Shall I tell 
the desk clerk?” 

“No; go down yourself and speak to Mr. d’Acos¬ 
ta. Bring him up with you in half an hour. Wait” 
—as the manchu was about to open the door. “Tell 
him that I prefer my champagne rather sweet— 
Russian style.” 

“Do you?” asked Liu Po-Yat. “So does the 
Prince Pavel Kokoshkine. You will get on very 
well with him.” 

“Is the prince going to be at dinner to-night?” 

“No. The prince would like to dine with you 
to-morrow night. If it is agreeable to you, Prince 
Kokoshkine will call for you to-morrow night at 
seven.” 


CHAPTER II 


THE VASE OF TCHOU-FOU-YAO 


IU PO-YAT had shuffled out of the room be- 



-L'fore Marie could find words to do justice to her 
stupefaction. Two dinner invitations, from two 
strangers! And she was enough of a woman of the 
world to realize that both invitations were the re¬ 
sult of her financial embarrassment, that somehow 
Moses d’Acosta as well as Prince Kokoshkine must 
have found out about it. 

“Can’t be helped,” she thought, as she chose a 
necklace of mutton-fat jade, looked at her other 
jewels, considering if she should pawn them. 

“Not yet,” she decided. 

She rummaged in her jewel-box; then, when her 
fingers encountered the little Chinese vase which 
her father, explaining his wish by a reference to his 
Scotch superstitions, had asked her to take along, 
she hesitated. She liked it. It was no bigger than 
a thumb-nail, but absolutely perfect in shape and 
color, green, with two gold dragons as handles, and 
painted on the inside with figures so small that one 
would need a magnifying glass to make them out. 
She picked it up now; then, obeying a curious in¬ 
stinct, slipped it in the fold of her girdle. 

Prince Pavel Kokoshkine was a Russian aristo¬ 
crat of the old regime, who had fought through the 
war as a captain of Cossacks. Like many of his 
class, he had found himself unprepared for the 
brutal sweep of the revolution. He did not know 


i 4 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

what to do. The basis of his life was smashed. So 
he left Russia and, embittered, like many others of 
his race and caste, turned his eyes eastward, to Mon¬ 
golia, China—the yellow lands whence, centuries 
earlier, certain of his Tartar ancestors had come. 
China, caught in the backwash of its own revolu¬ 
tionary troubles, with the Manchus intriguing in the 
north, the Japanese in Shantung, and ultraradical 
elements in the south, was more than ready to avail 
itself of his military knowledge, though in his own 
country he had been identified with reactionary 
politics. 

To-day he was a major-general in the Chinese Re¬ 
publican army, stationed in Canton, with headquar¬ 
ters not for from the Nan-Hai prison and in com¬ 
mand over the Southern Shenchi Ying, or “Augustly 
Divine Mechanism Army,” as the Chinese call their 
foreign-drilled field forces. He seldom set foot in 
the Shameen, the European quarter, avoided all in¬ 
tercourse with Europeans and Americans as much 
as he could, and lived in the manner of a mandarin 
—and he had asked Marie to dine with him to¬ 
morrow night! 

She was perturbed as she thought of it, and felt 
rather relieved when the door opened and Liu Po- 
Yat announced Mr. Moses d’Acosta. 

“Good-evening,” he said. 

“Good-evening, Mr. d’Acosta.” 

, He was completely sure of himself, neither bra¬ 
zen nor malapert in the way he bent over her hand 
nor embarrassingly apologetic for his unconven¬ 
tional invitation. Suddenly he walked over to the 
center-table, picked up the hotel bill and. tore it 
negligently across and across. 

“That’s all right,” he said, in answer to Marie’s 
expostulation. “It was just a silly mistake on the 
part of Monsieur Pailloux.” 


THE VASE OF TCHOU-FOU-YAO 15 

“But-” 

“What have I to do with it? Why, I own the 
hotel.” He bowed. “You will be my guest, Miss 
Campbell.” 

“But-” 

“My dear young lady, there are no obligations. 
I’ve been often the guest of—” He coughed, was 
silent. 

“Whose guest?” 

“Well, shall we call him your uncle? Or shall 
we call him Mr. Mavropoulos? Or shall we go 
straight back into ancient history and call him—ah 
—what is the old Tartar title he loved so?—the Ssu 
Yueh, eh, Miss Campbell?” 

“But—what--” 

Almost instinctively she choked the questions that 
crowded to her lips as she happened to catch the 
Manchu woman’s eyes, with a sharp message of 
warning in their depths. 

“Quite so,” she went on lamely. “Shall we go 
down-stairs? 1 ’ 

“Just a moment, please!” 

He crossed the room in a leisurely manner. In 
the farther corner stood an inlaid and lacquered 
rosewood table that supported the many Chinese 
curios on which she had squandered her quarter’s 
remittance during her strolls through the bazaars— 
bronze and jade, but mostly porcelain. He picked 
up arid examined a few of the pieces. 

“Charming!” he said, as he held up a tiny vase of 
crackled ruby and green. He looked at her nar¬ 
rowly. “Pardon me-” 

“Yes, Mr. d’Acosta?” 

“Have you, by any chance, a specimen of Tchou- 
fou-yao porcelain?” 

There was something in the innocent-enough ques¬ 
tion which filled her with uneasiness, caused her to 






16 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

look, as if for support, at the Manchu woman who 
stood there silent and rigid. She could have sworn 
that d’Acosta had intercepted the look; that a slight 
tremor of rage, quickly suppressed, was running 
through him. The Manchu woman coughed. * 
Something dramatic was in the atmosphere, some¬ 
thing almost sinister—and Marie gave a little shud¬ 
der. 

“Why,” she replied, and she had to control her¬ 
self to keep from stammering, “I am not an expert 
when it comes to Chinese art. I just like these 
things—hardly know their names-” 

“Of course you don’t!” said Mr. d’Acosta, with 
a gliding wink in his eyes that gave the lie to her 
words. “Shall we go down to dinner before the 
Chinese cook gives way to his racial leanings and 
puts rats’ tails into our caviar?” 

He said this with a laugh. But again Marie 
Campbell was conscious of a tragic undercurrent. 

She left the room and walked quickly down-stairs 
to the crimson-and-gold dining room, the man by 
her side, both talking vaguely about the weather. 

The last she saw, as she half turned on the 
threshold of her room, was the Manchu woman 
staring after her, an inscrutable message in her 
eyes. 

The scene in the dining room was typical of the 
snobbish, self-centered foreign colony in the Sha- 
meen. The place might have been a Broadway 
cabaret, a restaurant in the Chicago Loop, a Lon¬ 
don supper club, or a shimmering, glistening dance- 
place of the Parisian boulevards. Marie saw, felt. 

“Don’t you mind them. I know how you feel 
about China,” said d’Acosta. 

“Do you?” 

“Of course. And these people do not matter. 
China is like a huge lump of rubber. You can make 



THE VASE OF TCHOU-FOU-YAO 17 

an impression on it by pressing hard. But take 
your fingers away—and the rubber will jump 
straight back into place. There will not even be a 
mark left. And these people here—with their jew¬ 
els and their low-cut dresses and their millions— 
they’ll die some day—and China will live.” 

# “Why, I’ve been told that you are a multimillion¬ 
aire yourself—and your interests in China-” 

“Quite right. I am rich. But I am an idealist, 
a constructive idealist. I am a good friend of 
China. I wish I could make you see it. Then per¬ 
haps you would help me, instead of trying to-” 

“What?” 

“Play ’possum—that’s what you call it in Amer¬ 
ica, eh? Never mind. We’ll talk about it some 
other time.” 

“Mr. d’Acosta,” she began, “I assure you-” 

“Never mind, Miss Campbell,” he repeated. 

A little later he referred again to her apocry¬ 
phal uncle. 

“Mr. Mavropoulos used to like this place. It 
amused him.” 

“Mr. Mavropoulos?” 

“Call him the Ssu Yueh; call him by his Tartar 
title, if you prefer. I don’t think the republic will 
mind.” 

He accompanied his remarks with a low laugh, as 
if to warn her that she wouldn’t tell the truth, and 
that he knew she wouldn’t. 

“I hope you are enjoying this little party,” he 
said. “I owe it to your uncle’s memory to be nice 
to you.” 

“I don’t call that a compliment,” she replied, and, 
the next moment, his words echoing in her mind, she 
caught at something in their meaning—when he had 
mentioned her apocryphal uncle’s “memory.” The 
little mischievous imp in her heart caused her now; 





18 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

to probe more deeply into the mystery she felt 
gathering about her, to throw out a slightly 
grieved: 

“Did you say my uncle’s memoryf Is he—” 
She paused, wondering how far she dare go. 

“Yes,” d’Acosta replied; “he is dead. They got 
him. He always knew they would. And you 
hadn’t really heard that he died?” 

“No,” she replied, truthfully enough, tremen¬ 
dously thrilled, curious what would come next. 

“And yet you left America—came here-” 

“On an impulse.” Again she spoke the truth. . 

“Strange coincidence!” He stared at her, his 
fingers nervously curled round the stem of his cham¬ 
pagne-glass. “Then, I take it, you haven’t seen the 
papers recently. The North China Gazette had 
quite an article—sensational—but only so to the in¬ 
itiated. Here you are!” He drew from his pock¬ 
et a newspaper clipping. “Outsiders wouldn’t 
be able to make head or tail of it. It’s put in the 
form of a literary curiosity, a translation of some 
ancient bit of Chinese mysticism—I suppose you 
have the cipher-” 

“I’ll read it afterward,” she replied, cramming 
the clipping into her purse. 

“Very well.” And, to her disappointment, he 
led the conversation back to impersonalities, to in¬ 
terrupt himself, with the same disconcerting sud¬ 
denness and to ask her again the curiously innocent, 
curiously disturbing question he had put to her in 
her room. 

“Tell me, Miss Campbell; have you not really a 
specimen of Tchou-fou-yao porcelain?” 

“But”—she was becoming embarrassed at the 
tremendous earnestness that throbbed in his accents 
—“Mr. d’Acosta-” 

“Tchou-fou-yao,” he insisted. “The porcelain 





THE VASE OF TCHOU-FOU-YAO 19 

of emperors! A tiny vase no bigger than a thumb¬ 
nail, with two gold dragons snarling over its lizard- 
green surface, an orifice belled like the cup of a flow¬ 
er, and painted on the inside with infinitesimal fig¬ 
ures.” 

Marie’s hand stole to her girdle. She felt the 
little vase there, said to herself that it seemed to 
tally with the one of which d’Acosta was speaking. 
She felt sorry for the man. Should she tell him? 
Should she show him the vase? Then she remem¬ 
bered her father’s strange warning the day they had 
parted: “Don’t show it to people, and don’t talk 
about it unless you absolutely have to.” She gave a 
little shudder of apprehension. 

What was this mystery into which she felt her¬ 
self drawn as if into a whirlpool? This stranger 
knew about it, the Manchu maid, and also her 
father. What was there back of it all? Why had 
her father never spoken to her about it? Then she 
recalled her own feelings during the last few 
months; how, subconsciously, it had seemed to her 
that China mattered more to her than she knew and 
that—yes; the realization came like a shock—that 
she mattered to China. 

“Why,” she said, “you talk like a typical collector 
—the frantic sort, you know, who holds his friends’ 
Wedgwood teacups upside down and then pronounc¬ 
es them to be forgeries!” 

“Don’t play with me,” he said. “Can’t I make 
you see? Can’t I make you understand?” He 
was tremendously in earnest, and for a moment 
Marie felt like confessing that she had been play¬ 
ing with him. But, somehow, she again recalled 
her father’s warning. “But—Miss Campbell— 
please—won’t you—” He slurred, stopped. 

Again the little mischievous imp rose in her heart 
and whispered to her to fathom this mystery. 


20 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


“Mr. d’Acosta,” she said ingenuously, “why don’t 
you tell me the truth?” 

“Eh?” He looked up sharply. 

“I mean, rather, why don’t you put all your cards 
on the table?” 

’ “All my cards? But-—you know them all!” 

“Do I?” she countered. 

“You know you do! Don’t you—won’t you un¬ 
derstand? It is not a question with me of dollars 
and cents. No, no!” 

She felt nonplussed. Then she decided to aim 
another shot into the blue, recalling certain conver¬ 
sations between her father and his partner, Jack 
Henderson, when they were searching for the usual 
explanation through which too rich people like to 
excuse their greed to themselves. 

“Power,” she said serenely. “It’s power you’re 
after, Mr. d’Acosta!” 

“No. Power—why—that’s an old tale to me. 
I am bored with power. What I want is something 
big, basic! And if you have any of your uncle’s 
blood, you would-” 

“Here’s my mysterious uncle again!” thought 
Marie, and the next moment Mr. d’Acosta’s fea¬ 
tures were blotted into a reddish-purple smudge as 
a great shadow fell across the table. 

Marie, looking up, beheld the Pekingese banker, 
Sun Yu-Wen, whom, a few days earlier, she had 
watched in such animated conversation, with her 
host. His immense body was dressed in a rather 
extravagantly Pekingese style—a long robe of or¬ 
ange-colored, satin-lined grenadine silk embroidered 
with black bats, and on his round cap a button of 
transparent red, the emblem of a mandarin of the 
first class, worn in calm defiance of the fact that the 
republic had forbidden the wearing of imperial in¬ 
signia. 



THE VASE OF TCHOU-FOU-YAO 21 


“Ah—good-evening!” His words were soft; his 
fat, ivory-yellow, passionless face was suffused with 
a patient kindliness. Yet, for all this kindliness, he 
gave Marie the impression of something impersonal, 
very ancient, very tired, even, in a passive way, un¬ 
human. 

Mr. d’Acosta had risen and bowed. The other 
had returned the salutation, Chinese fashion, with 
his hands clasped over his huge chest. Both looked 
at each other tensely, observantly. To Marie, it 
was like a scene out of a play—a moment of tre¬ 
mendous suspense, of waiting—for what? “Ene¬ 
mies”—the melodramatic thought came to her— 
“bitter enemies!” Yet the smiles on keen Semitic 
and bland Mongol faces were not sneers. It was a 
smile from the heart, of genuine mutual liking. 

Still, as she heard the gliding Manchu words 
which presently the Chinaman addressed to d’Acos¬ 
ta, although she could not make out the meaning of 
a single syllable, she sensed in them a certain mina¬ 
tory undercurrent, and saw it confirmed by the look 
of almost alarmed inquiry that came into the Lev¬ 
antine’s eyes. He replied in Manchu, in tones that 
were clear, high-pitched, but somehow marred and 
tainted. Then: 

“Miss Campbell,” he said, “allow me to present 
Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen.” 

“Charmed,” she replied. Her uneasy fear came 
and went in waves. 

Sun Yu-Wen lowered his obese bulk a little gin¬ 
gerly into the frail Louis-Quinze chair. He smiled 
at d’Acosta. 

“I suppose,” he said in English, “it is all settled.” 

“No, I told you—nothing is settled,” the Levan¬ 
tine replied, with the suspicion of a snarl. 

“Oh, is that so?” 

Sun Yu-Wen turned to Marie, and again the fear 


22 


THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


of this secret dramatic combat of unknown forces 
into which she felt herself drawn against her will 
rose in her soul. She was on the point of blurting 
out the truth—that she knew nothing, that she had 
simply followed a hoydenish, adventurous impulse, 
that she was sorry—when, as from a great distance, 
she heard Sun Yu-Wen’s voice, soft, insistent. 

“Ah—then there is still hope for me?” 

“Listen—I—” She could not go on. Her con¬ 
fession choked her. She looked pitifully at Sun 
Yu-Wen. 

“Never mind,” he said. “Presently you will de¬ 
cide. Presently you will follow your whim or, per¬ 
haps, your conviction and play—ah—Fate to a very 
great issue.” He turned to d’Acosta. “My friend,” 
he continued, “it is strange indeed how back of 
everything there is the soft hand of woman, how the 
fate of the many millions hangs always and always 
from a woman’s jeweled earrings—in China—in Eu¬ 
rope—belike in the moon. A woman, wilful and 
stubborn as only a woman can be—or a cat! What 
does it say in the classics? ‘ Po-nien-jou-chi i-tien - 
jou-ki } —‘Stubborn as a rock, hard as ancient lac¬ 
quer.’ ” 

Again he addressed Marie. 

“An appropriate quotation, don’t you think?” he 
asked. “Perhaps—although you do not speak the 
language of your native land”—and Marie looked 
up, startled, when she understood that the fact of 
China being her birthplace was known to the man¬ 
darin—“you are familiar with bur literature, at 
least in translation. Perhaps’’—he lowered his 
voice—“you even take an interest in such rubbish 
as a brittle bit of Tchou-fou-yao porcelain.” 

Marie could not restrain herself any longer. With 
a choked mumble of apology, she rose and almost 
ran from the dining room. 


THE VASE OF TCHOU-FOU-YAO 23 

Her first impulse was to go to her room. But 
she reflected that perhaps one or both of the men 
would follow her. Finally she thought of an up¬ 
stairs parlor, reserved for the use of women guests. 
She went to it quickly. It was empty except for a 
soft-footed Mongol maid. She sat down and lit 
a cigarette, and it was not long before calmer reflec¬ 
tion came to her and with it, typically, her American 
sense of humor and her inherited Scots common 
sense of building up and investigating logically, con¬ 
structively, fearlessly. 

She walked over to the writing-desk, found pencil 
and cable-blanks, and scribbled rapidly: 

Anthony Campbell, 

Broad Street, New York, U. S. A. 

Cable immediately, care Grand Hotel, particulars about vase; 
also let me know about Uncle Mavropoulos. 

She stopped, considered if she should ask for 
money; then decided she would not. She knew her 
father would order her to return by the next steam¬ 
er, and she was not yet ready. She was still a 
remittance-woman, and here was China, mysterious, 
fascinating, beckoning. Here was adventure! She 
called to the maid: 

“Take this down to the desk. Have them charge 
it up.” 

When the maid had left, Marie remembered 
d’Acosta’s allusion to the article in the North China 
Gazette in regard to the death of her mythical un¬ 
cle, who seemed to have gone under a variety of 
names. She took the clippings from her purse and 
looked at it. It was entitled: 


Translation of an Ancient Example of Tartar-Chinese Mysti¬ 
cism 


and read: 


Omniscient Gautama! Far-seeing, all-seeing Tathagata! How 
multiform the consolation of Thy Word! How marvelous Thy 


24 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

Understanding! Was this, then, also one of the myriad illu¬ 
sions painted before Thy eyes by Mara in the black, black night 
when the earth rocked like a chariot of war in the shock of battle? 

1 “My word!” She put down the clipping. “Just 
about as clear as pea soup!” 

She was still puzzled when, a few minutes later, 
the maid returned. 

“Send off the cable ?” asked Marie. 

“Yes, missy.” 

“Thanks! By the way, you couldn’t find out if 
those two gentlemen I dined with are still in the 
hotei?” 

“Yes, missy. They dlove off in callaige five, ten 
minute back.” 

“Thank you again.” 

She crossed over to the telephone, gave the desk 
clerk strict instructions that she was at home to no¬ 
body, and took the elevator up to her room, deciding 
on the way that now was the time to “pump” the 
Manchu maid. 


CHAPTER III 


THE DEATH OF LIU PO-YAT 

M ARIE reached her room, switched on the elec¬ 
tric light and went toward her bedroom. 
Then, suddenly, she gave a shriek and stared 
straight ahead. For there, on the bedroom thres¬ 
hold, she saw Liu Po-Yat stretched out in a darken¬ 
ing pool of blood. Marie rushed up to the woman. 

Liu Po-Yat was bleeding to death from a dozen 
knife-wounds. She had almost reached a state of 
coma. Marie gathered all her courage. She knelt 
down and lifted up the bleeding head. 

The freezing lips tried to speak. A gurgle came 
from the contracting throat. Finally a few inco¬ 
herent words peaked out. 

“Chuen to yan—” And again, "Chuen to yan 

“Please!” implored Marie. “Speak English— 
oh, please-” 

“Chuen to yan” repeated the other. “Chuen to 
yan ”—as if trying to give a message. 

“Chuen to yan f” echoed Marie. 

“Yes! Remember! Tell him-” 

“Who?” 

“Your—friend.” 

“Tell me! Who is the friend you mean? 
D’Acosta?” Liu Po-Yat shook her head negative¬ 
ly. “The mandarin?” 

“No”—the dying woman gurgled out the words 
25 




26 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

—“not friends—those—like other will be.” Sud¬ 
denly she revived a little. She lifted her right hand 
in a supreme spasm of energy; then, even as her 
body was stiffening, she pointed into the bedroom. 

Marie rose, crossed the threshold. She found 
her jewel-box upset, its contents strewn over the ta¬ 
ble itself, a few scattered on the floor. 

Her hand went to her girdle. The little Tchou- 
fou-yao vase—that’s what the murderers had been 
looking for! 

No piece of jewelry was missing. 

Who was the assassin? Moses d’Acosta? Sun 
Yu-Wen? But the next moment she dismissed the 
suspicion. For she had dined with them, and the 
Chinese maid in the parlor had seen them drive off. 
And the dying woman had not mentioned either of 
them, but had spoken repeatedly, insistingly of 
“Chuen to yan ”—whatever the Mongol monosylla¬ 
bles meant. 

“Who, then, did it?” she asked herself. “And 
what is this vase? What is its sinister significance?” 

She took it out, looked at it, examined the lizard- 
green surface, the tiny painting on the inside. 

What was its meaning, its secret? And what 
had she to do with it? Or, perhaps, came the next 
thought, her mother, who had died in giving her 
birth, here in China, where her father had married 
her, whence he had returned white-haired and rather 
bitter and taciturn—her mother, whom her father 
never mentioned, or her grandfather? 

But murder had been committed, and she realized 
that she must notify the hotel management. 

She went down-stairs and entered the private of¬ 
fice of Monsieur Paul Pailloux, the manager, a 
pudgy Parisian exile who carried his black beard 
ahead of him like a battering-ram and who bowed 
before her with opulent superciliousness. 


THE DEATH OF LIU PO-YAT 27 

“Ah—Miss Campbell 1 ” he said. “That bill— 
it was a mistake-” 

“It isn’t about the bill.” 

“No? Then—what can I do for you?” 

“You can send for the police.” 

“Police? Ah—your delicious American sense of 
humor-” 

“Cut it out! There’s nothing humorous in mur¬ 
der!” 

“Murder? Ah —nom de Dieu! Murder?” 

' “Exactly.” And she told him. 

“Are you sure, Miss Campbell?” he asked. 

“What do you mean—am I sure? Didn’t I see 
her? Didn’t she talk to me before she died?” 

“What did she say?” 

“Just a few words.” 

“What exactly, Miss Campbell?” insisted the 
Frenchman. 

It was partly her revolt at the man’s cold-blooded 
curiosity, partly obedience to a peculiar impulse tell¬ 
ing her that Liu Po-Yat’s dying words had not been 
meant for everybody’s ears which caused her to re¬ 
ply evasively: 

“I couldn’t make out. I was naturally excited.” 

“Of course,” he said soothingly. 

“Let’s go up to my room.” 

“No,” he said in a kindly manner. “Such a har¬ 
rowing experience—I sha’n’t permit you—” He 
walked to the door. “I shall go up-stairs myself 
and investigate. Rest here until I return.” He 
left the office, closing the door. 

It was a small room, hardly big enough to hold a 
roll-top desk, three chairs, and, wedged in between 
desk and wall, a little safe with its door swinging 
open. 

Marie waited, ten minutes, twenty, twenty-five. 
Finally, impatient, she stepped out, but as she was 




28 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


about to turn toward the elevator, the house detec¬ 
tive, a half-caste with a flat, brutish face, stopped 
her. 

“Please wait in there,” he said. “Monsieur 
Pailloux just sent for me. And he wants no 
scandal, no excitement—you understand, don’t 
you ?” 

She went back into the office and sat down. She 
was in a conflicting state of mind. She felt deeply 
moved at the Manchu woman’s tragic death. She 
also felt conscious of a personal loss, rather more 
selfish. For Liu Po-Yat had evidently been fa¬ 
miliar with the coilings of the mysterious forces 
which were sucking Marie into their whirlpool, had 
doubtless only been waiting for a propitious moment 
to take the American girl into her confidence. And 
now she was dead; Marie felt very lonely and young 
and homesick. 

Time and again her thoughts returned to the lit¬ 
tle vase. Twice she took it from the fold of her 
girdle, looked at it. She had taken it out for the 
third time when, outside the door, she heard foot¬ 
steps, voices, and she tried to slip the vase back. 
But her nail caught in the thin fabric; a seam ripped. 
She realized that she could not return the vase to 
its hiding-place, and, dimly sensing that she did not 
want whoever entered to find the thing in her hand, 
she looked round for a place in which to conceal it— 
the safe! It was open. Rapidly she stepped up to 
it and pushed the vase into the farthest corner 
among a lot of papers. 

She had already straightened up when the door 
opened and Pailloux and the house detective en¬ 
tered. 

“Well?” asked Marie. “What did you find 
out?” 

Pailloux smiled. 


THE DEATH OF LIU PO-YAT 29 

“We found that you were mistaken. No mur¬ 
der has been committed.” 

“But—Liu Po-Yat—I saw her-” 

“Doubtless a hallucination, Miss Campbell. Mr. 
De Smett and I”—pointing at the detective—“went 
to your rooms, and”—he spread eloquent hands— 
“we found nothing.” 

“N-nothing?” Marie stammered. 

“A hallucination.” Pailloux smiled. “Perhaps 
—pardon—a little too much champagne?” 

“Too much champagne—my eye!” cried Marie. 
“You are crazy, both of you!” 

“Are we?” asked the detective. He turned to 
the manager. “Perhaps Miss Campbell would pre¬ 
fer to see with her own eyes?” 

“I’ll say I do!” affirmed Marie. 

“Very well.” 

And, followed by De Smett, Pailloux led the way 
to her suite. 

“Look!” he said, as they entered. 

Marie looked, looked again, doubting, for a 
.moment, her sanity. No body was there, no 
blood spots, no signs of struggle, of murder. She 
went into her bedroom and glanced at the dress¬ 
ing-table. The jewel-box was in its old place, un¬ 
opened. 

No doubt, she said to herself, the manager 
himself, with the help of the detective and most 
likely other employees, had utilized the half- 
hour she spent in the office to remove the body 
and all traces of the tragedy and straighten the 
rooms. They had done it for a reason. What 
was it? 

Very quickly, and as rationally as she could, she 
gathered her straying thoughts. By to-morrow her 
father would have replied to her cable. That would 
give her some sort of clue to the mystery. Until 



3 o THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

then she would have to make the best of a bad situ¬ 
ation. So she smiled at the two men. 

“Gentlemen,” she said, “I apologize. I must 
have had a drop too much of champagne. Shock¬ 
ing, don’t you think?” 

Pailloux coughed. 

“Miss Campbell,” he began, “I would—I regret 
—but-” 

“What? Come through!” 

“You are-” 

“Under arrest!” The detective completed the 
other’s sentence and took a step in the girl’s direc¬ 
tion. She stood her ground. 

“Why,” she said, “this time it’s you who must 
have had a drop too much to drink! Arrest me—• 
me —you said?” 

“Yes.” 

“But I thought you said no murder has been com¬ 
mitted?” 

“There hasn’t,” said the detective. 

“What’s my crime, then?” 

“Crime?” Pailloux shrugged distressed shoul¬ 
ders. “Hardly a crime—at least-” 

“If you prefer to make immediate restitution, 
Miss Campbell-” 

“Restitution of what, may I inquire?” 

“Of a little Chinese vase. A bit of Tchou-fou- 
yao porcelain,” smiled the manager. “Come, Miss 
Campbell! You are accused of—pardon—not 
stealing it—no, no-” 

“Nothing as crude as that, eh?” 

“Of course not! But perhaps you saw the little 
vase, liked it too much, eh?” 

“You’d better give it back,” growled the detec¬ 
tive. 

“Oh!” She drew in her breath. Here was the 
vase again. She had hidden it in the safe. Doubt- 







THE DEATH OF LIU PO-YAT 31 

less it was this tiny piece of porcelain which the 
murderer had come to steal, which the Manchu 
woman had protected with her life, not knowing 
that her mistress had taken it along. D’Acosta 
wanted the vase. So did Sun Yu-Wen. And her 
father— She remembered his words. 

“Monsieur Pailloux,” she said, “I don’t know 
what you are talking about.” 

“Miss Campbell,” now implored the man, “I beg 
of you—you put me into a very awkward situation 

_n 

“Not half so awkward as the situation you are 
putting me in!” 

“I am helpless. The person who accuses you 

“Who is that person?” 

“You will be told at the police station—in jail!” 
cried the detective roughly. 

“Oh—jail, is it?” 

“Please,” said Pailloux, “do not force me to go 
that far. Give up the vase-” 

“I haven’t got it!” 

“You will be searched at the station—and if they 
find the vase-” 

“Miss Campbell,” cut in the detective, “I want to 
warn you that everything you say-” 

“Will be used against me?” She laughed. 
“How gorgeously like home, sweet home! Amer¬ 
ica—ah—that reminds me—I want you to notify 
the American consul at once, Monsieur Pailloux.” 

“Can’t be done!” De Smett interrupted quickly. 

“Is going to be done!” said the girl. She turned 
to the manager. “I’ll come along without a fuss if 
you telephone the American consul right now, in my 
presence, or let me ring him up myself. If you re¬ 
fuse-” 

\ “Well,” asked the detective, “what would hap- 








32 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

pen? Going to hit me over the wrist with the 
fringe of your shawl?’’ 

“Don’t forget—we are bound to pass through the 
hotel lobby. And I give you warning. I went to 
Vassar, misspent two years there—so the dean told 
me. But I was cheer-leader at our basket-ball 
matches. And, when it comes to shouting, why— 
to quote my favorite black-face Broadway comedian 
—vou haven’t heard nothing yet.” 

The two men looked attach other silently, ques- 
tioninglv. 

“Do I win?” asked the girl. 

“You do!” growled the detective. 

“Good! I’ll ring up the consul.” 

“Let me do it,” said the manager. 

“All right, my dear Gaston!” laughed the girl. 
“Politeness first in a Frenchman—eh?—even when 
he is as crooked as a bull-pup’s tail!” 

The manager winced, was going to say something, 
thought better of it, and unhooked the telephone re¬ 
ceiver while Marie stood over him, telling him word 
for word what to say: 

“Hello? Mr. Coburn? Pailloux talking. A 
young American girl has been arrested. . . . 

A Miss Campbell. . . . Theft. She wants 
you to come to the jail. . . . In an hour? All 
right!” He slammed the receiver back. 

Five minutes later the girl, sitting between the 
two men, was driving through the Shameen, out of 
it, and into the native quarter. 

In ten minutes the carriage stopped in front of a 
tall, imposing structure, with, above its broad en¬ 
tranceway, an ornate Chinese sign in scarlet and 
gold flanked by a smaller one which read in English: 


Southern Chinese Republic 
Headquarters of Canton Metropolitan Police 


THE DEATH OF LIU PO-YAT 33 

“Here we are,” said Pailloux. “And—Miss 
Campbell—I give you one more chance—if you 

want to give up the vase-” 

“‘Lead on, Macduff P ” she quoted frivolously. 
And, with a laugh, she preceded the two men into 
the building. 



CHAPTER IV 


A LADY IN JAIL 

I N THE room Marie entered were half a dozen 
desks along the walls, behind which sat pom¬ 
pous Cantonese captains of police as well as a few 
Europeans, attended by orderlies, and, at the far¬ 
ther end, on a platform, a red-faced Englishman 
was presiding, flanked by two Tartars in black 
gowns and strange head-dresses. Afterward Ma¬ 
rie found out that it was a police headquarters and 
court of law combined and that, presided over by 
the red-faced Englishman, and in deference to the 
turbulent times with revolution and counter-revolu¬ 
tion rife on every side, justice was'being given here 
day and night. 

But Marie’s joy at the thought that here people 
spoke English and that a number of the officials 
were Europeans was short-lived. For while Pail- 
loux and De Smett had stepped forward to register 
their complaint, a friendly Liverpool sailor who, as 
he explained to her, had come here as a witness to 
help a Chinese pal out of trouble, told her in an¬ 
swer to her question that, ever since the establish¬ 
ment of the Southern republic, all the European riff¬ 
raff of the treaty ports had found service under the 
republican administration. 

“Rotten bloody swine they are—if ye’ll pardon 
my language,” said the sailor. “By the way, lydy, 
wot are you doin’ ’ere, if I may arsk?” 

“I’ve been arrested.” 


34 


A LADY IN JAIL 35 

“But it’s the chinky police station! Yer gotta be 
judged by the European courts.” 

“Oh!” Here was news for Marie. 

But when she was asked to step in front of the 
red-faced Englishman, who was the presiding judge 
and whom Pailloux addressed as “Mr. Winchester,” 
and when she told him that he had no right to try 
her here, the man only laughed. 

“Don’t talk to me of rights!” he said. “Might 
—that’s what counts here-” 

“Wait till the American consul comes.” 

“All right,” he said; “I’ll wait. In the mean¬ 
time—I do not want to be too severe. I’ll dismiss 
the complaint if you give up the vase.” 

“I haven’t got it.” 

“Stubborn young baggage, aren’t you?” 

He spoke in Chinese to one of the orderlies. The 
latter left, and returned a few seconds later with 
two elderly, capable-looking Chinese women. The 
judge spoke to them, then turned to Marie. 

“They’re going to search you,” he said. “Go— 
and don’t make a fuss.” 

Marie was furious, but submitted without a word. 
She was led into another room. The searching was 
thorough, but, of course, the two women found 
nothing and told the judge so when they had re¬ 
turned to the court-room. 

The judge turned a hectic purple. 

“Miss Campbell,” he said, “I warn you most sol¬ 
emnly. You are in a dangerous situation. Tell me 
—now—immediately. Here”—quickly thrusting 
out pencil and paper—“don’t tell me; write it 
down.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “What 
did you do with the vase?” 

“I refuse to answer. You have no right to-” 

“Right be blowed! Might—that’s what counts; 
didn’t I tell you? Going to own up?” 



36 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“No!” Her eyes gleamed. “And I-” 

The judge interrupted her. 

“Remove the prisoner!” he shouted, and a Chi¬ 
nese orderly rushed up. 

“Remove the prisoner—nothing!” she cried, now 
thoroughly roused. “I don’t know what your laws 
are here, and I don’t care! But”—and suddenly 
all her great, latent nationalism blazed up into 
white-hot heat—“I am an American. I insist on 
my rights! And—first of all—I want to know 
what the charges against me are.” 

The judge had regained his composure. 

“A female Saul among the Prophets?” he in¬ 
quired with irony. 

If at that moment she could have cleared up the 
whole thing, she would not have done so; for it was 
beginning to become a question of principle with 
her, national principle as well as personal. 

“I insist on my rights,” she said. “What are the 
charges against me? And who preferred them? 
I tell you again I am an American!” 

“Very interesting, I am sure,” commented the 
judge, with a wink in the direction of Pailloux. 
“But whatT say goes.” He turned to the orderly. 
“Remove the prisoner!” 

Marie again faced the judge. This time she was 
speaking very quietly. 

“You are an Englishman?” 

“What about it?” 

“Do you call this British fair play? And you” 
—turning to Pailloux—“you call yourself a French¬ 
man! Bah!” She snapped her fingers derisively. 
“You are renegades—both of you!” 

The two men colored. The hotel manager 
looked at the other man with a helpless expression; 
he whispered to him. The judge gave a lopsided 
smile. 




A LADY IN JAIL 37 

“Very well, Miss Campbell,” he said; “I shall 
tell you since you are so insistent. You are under 
arrest because you are accused of having purloined 
a certain vase-” 

“I know!” she cut in impatiently. “I want you 
to tell me who-” 

“You are furthermore under arrest,” continued 
the judge, “for a much graver reason.” 

“What?” 

“You are suspected of being an enemy of the 
Southern Chinese Republic, of having conspired 
with the republic’s foes to bring about its downfall.” 

Momentarily the girl was frightened. But al¬ 
most immediately she regained her composure. 

“I beg your pardon,” she said courteously. “But, 
once more—have I the right to know who preferred 
these charges against me?” 

“Well—just to oblige you—I shall tell you. The 
charges are brought against you by three people. 
They are myself, as presiding judge and chief of the 
Southern Chinese intelligence service, Monsieur 
Pailloux, and”—he leaned across his desk—“by the 
Chuen to yan of the Temple of the Protecting Dei¬ 
ties.” 

He stopped, staring at her closely, evidently 
eager to see what impression the information had 
made on her. Marie was silent for a few moments. 
Two thoughts were in her mind. One had to do 
with the words: “Chuen to yan” They were the 
same words which the Manchu woman had used 
just before she died, when Marie had asked her who 
had attacked her. What did the words signify? 
Well, she would ask Mr. Coburn, the American 
consul ; he would be here within the hour. 

Her other thought dealt with the temple of which 
Winchester had spoken. She knew it. It was the 
temple of Canton’s guardian saints, though foreign- 




38 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

ers preferred calling it the “Temple of Horrors.” 
On either side of the entrance-gate and farther up 
the walls were life-sized wood and stone figures 
representing people undergoing the tortures inflicted 
in the ten kingdoms of the Buddhistic hell. There 
were some being bored through the middle, sawn be¬ 
tween two boards, precipitated upon turned-up 
swords, boiled in oil, crushed by the slow descent 
of a red-hot bronze bell. The Temple of Horrors! 
The Tchou-fou-yao porcelain! And what had she 
to do with it all? What- 

She would own up that it all meant nothing to her 
—nothing, that she had put the little vase in the 
hotel safe, that she was just a headstrong, adven¬ 
turous American girl who had had her fill of adven¬ 
tures and thrills and wanted to go home by the next 
steamer to the sane life, the safe and sure. She 
turned to the judge. 

Then again, suddenly, she felt a riot of strange 
sensations surging in her soul and heart. Again 
she had an impression of half-forgotten things, a 
gauze-veiled memory of something she had lived 
through. 

All right; there was the American consul; there 
was her father at the other end of the cable; there 
was, lastly, the “friend” to whom the dying Man- 
chu woman had referred. Not Moses d’Acosta or 
Mandariq, Sun Yu-Wen. A third! Perhaps—she 
wondered—Prince Pavel Kokoshkine, the Russian 
exile in the service of the Southern Chinese Repub¬ 
lic, who had invited her to dine with him the next 
evening! 

“Well?” asked Mr. Winchester. “What is the 
answer?” 

“The answer is that I’ll go to jail,” replied Marie 
Campbell. 

“By Jove!” exclaimed the judge, with something 



A LADY IN JAIL 39 

like admiration in his accents. “I must admit that 
at least when it comes to nerve, you are a Simon- 
pure American!” 

“You’ll find out more about that when the consul 
gets here.” 

“Doubtless! Doubtless!” He smiled. 

He turned again to the orderly, with quick in¬ 
structions in Chinese. The orderly spoke to Marie. 

“Coming, missy?” he asked. 

“Right-o, old dear!” said the girl, and followed 
him. 

The prison cell turned out to be not a prison cell 
at all but a fair-sized and comfortable-enough room 
with two large iron-grilled windows, a door that was 
open, a couch, and a few rocking-chairs which spoke 
eloquently and nostalgically of Grand Rapids, 
Michigan, U. S. A. She touched their golden-oak 
wood tenderly. 

“If anybody had ever told me, in the days when 
I went in for early-Colonial furniture, that Grand 
Rapids would make me feel sentimental, I would 
have called him a liar!” she said out loud, very 
much to the surprise of an East Indian who was 
hovering round the door, evidently the jailer. 

He was a brown-faced, agate-eyed babu, very fat 
and oily, and clad in white gauze, which,. consider¬ 
ing his fantastic bodily contours, gave him a gro¬ 
tesque appearance. 

Twice she talked to him. But each time he shook 
his head. 

“Against regulation number fifteen, paragraph 
three, to talk to prisoners suspected of political 
crimes. Yes-s-s, memsahib!” 

Marie laughed. 

“How I adore being addressed as ‘memsahib’! 
Really—it thrills me so! It makes me feel no end 
Kipling!” 


4 o THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

But it made no impression on the man. He con¬ 
tinued to stare at her silently with that passionless 
gaze of the Indo-Aryan to whom eternities are only 
a vulgar matter of a yawn and a stretch, and to 
whom excitement and interest in worldly subjects 
are merely the ungentlemanly and unintelligible 
pastimes of crude Western barbarians. Minutes 
moved on in a sullen, maddening procession. Only 
once was the silence interrupted, savagely, by a 
scream, then an outburst of elaborate quarter-deck 
profanity. She was walking up and down at the 
time. When she heard the noise, she stopped near 
the door and looked out, while the babu, who had 
turned to see whence the row came, had his back to 
her. Across the corridor, not very far away, she 
saw another room with the door open, and inside, 
being cross-examined by two bullying Chinese offi¬ 
cials, the Liverpool sailor who had befriended her 
in the court-room. 

“You will stay here until you confess to whom you 
delivered the guns,” said one of the officials. 

Again the sailor broke into whole-hearted pro¬ 
fanity, winding up with: 

“Just yer wyte till I gets out o’ ’ere, yer plurry, 
rotten chink yer! I’ll”—he choked with rage— 
“aw—the things wot I’m goin’ to do to yer—wot 
ho—it’ll be a bleedin’ shyme! Just wyte!” 

“Bravo!” cried Marie. “Hello there, compan¬ 
ion in misery! Three cheers!” 

But immediately the door to the sailor’s room 
was shut from the inside, while the babu turned to 
her. 

“Memsahib ” he implored, “it is againstYfie reg¬ 
ulations-” 

She sat down. A dozen thoughts whirled in her 
brain. If she could only decipher the clipping from 
the North China Gazette which Mr. d’Acosta had 



A LADY IN JAIL 41 

given to her! She opened her purse, looked at it. 
It was useless. And all the time the babu stared 
at her, without uttering a single word and with an 
air of worldly detachment which finally got on her 
nerves. 

“Look here, you piece of coffee-eclair fraud!” 
she cried at last, thoroughly annoyed. “Say some¬ 
thing, or I’ll throw this chair at you!” 

“Memsahib,” he replied, with the precise and un¬ 
human deliberation of a phonograph, “speaking in 
my strictly official capacity, I beg to point out to 
you that it is against the law of the Southern Chin¬ 
ese Republic to throw chairs or other hard sub¬ 
stances at the heads of members of the judiciary. 
Please, memsahib, be so kind as not to throw the 
chair!” 

Marie burst into laughter. 

After which she decided that she was tired. She 
closed her eyes, falling into easy sleep. It did not 
seem more than ten minutes when she was called by 
the babu y s falsetto voice. 

“Be pleased to awaken, memsahib. The Amer¬ 
ican consul has arrived.” 

She sat up straight. 

“The American consul!” she cried. “Show him 
to me, my lad!” 

But when, shortly afterward, Mr. Tecumseh Co¬ 
burn, a tall young man with a high nose, a Virgin¬ 
ian drawl and a super-Virginian manner, came in, 
bowed to her, and waved the babu outside with a 
courtly but dragooning gesture and sat down across 
from her, her joy was destined to be short-lived. 

“Miss Campbell,” he said, “I am afraid you are 
in a very awkward situation.” 

“Right-o! That’s where you come in.” 

“I—but-” 

“Don’t I—I mean my father—pay most exorbi- 



42 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

tant taxes? Didn’t I—again I mean my father— 
vote for the party which put you into your consular 
swivel chair?” 

“That’s exactly it!” said Mr. Coburn. “Did 
your father vote?” 

“I believe that he-” 

“Or could he have voted if he had wanted to, 
Miss Campbell?” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“When I heard that they brought you here in¬ 
stead of to the consular court in the Shameen, I be¬ 
came very indignant. I went straight to the Chin¬ 
ese civilian governor and I registered a/kick. But 
that bland Mongol assured me by all his household 
divinities and proved it to me—yes; proved it to 
me, for he had cabled to Washington for the official 
information—that your father never became natur¬ 
alized, that therefore you had no right to appeal 
to the American consul.” 

“Mr. Coburn,” maintained the girl stoutly, “I am 
an American—every bit of me!” 

“Yes,” he said; “you are. In feeling and”—he 
smiled—“in looks. In pluck. In resourcefulness. 
But—nationally—legally—I am so sorry-” 

“All right,” she replied. “The British consul, 
then.” 

“I thought of that. I talked to him. And—” 
He coughed, was silent. 

“Yes?” 

“We went back to the Chinese governor togeth¬ 
er. Mr. Winchester, the judge of this court, was 
already there.” 

“What happened?” 

“The Chinese authorities produced proof that you 
are a Chinese subject.” 

“With the name of Campbell?” she mocked. 
“I know that I was born in China, but-” 





A LADY IN JAIL 43 

“They proved that, according to an old law not 
yet abolished by the republic and reaching far back 
to the days of Tartar dominion, the children of Tar¬ 
tars and kindred Central-Asian races, on both the 
father’s and the mother’s side, are Chinese sub¬ 
jects.” 

“My father is Scotch!” 

“What about your mother? Perhaps she— 
Certainly you ought to know-” 

“I Ought to know!” cried the girl. “Oh, yes— 
you are quite right —I ought to know. But-” 

She was silent, staring straight ahead of her; she 
felt utterly alone as suddenly through the mists of 
her apprehension floated down the full realization 
of the fact that her father had never taken her into 
his confidence as to her mother, who and what she 
had been. Mystery, intrigue, tragedy were on ev¬ 
ery side of her. Her glance crossed the man’s, and 
he took her right hand in his. 

“I wish I could help you more,” he said. “But 
—don’t you see? I am the American consul, and 
this is a political case of a foreign government 
against one of its own subjects. There is diplo¬ 
matic etiquette—my consular oath. In fact, before 
the Chinese officials allowed me to see you alone, I 
had to assure them that-” 

“I understand, Mr. Coburn.” 

“Don’t give up the ship, though! I don’t know 
exactly why you are here in this predicament. But 
I was given to understand by the Chinese officials 
and by Judge Winchester that you can get out of it 
simply enough by telling them something—I don’t 
know what—which they seem keen on knowing. It 
must be political, or they wouldn’t be so excited, so 
upset-” 

“Are they really? I am glad of it.” 

“Why, Miss Campbell?” 






44 JHE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“Vindictiveness, revenge! That’s the Scotch of 
me! I don’t like Mr. Winchester or Pailloux or all 
the rest.” 

“Never mind that. Tell them what they want to 
know and they’ll release you at once. They are 
even willing to pay your passage home. What do 
you say?” 

“I say, ‘No!’ ” 

“But—listen-” 

“I am grateful to you, Mr. Coburn. But—” 
She hesitated. She thought of the murdered Man- 
chu woman, of Pailloux’s and De Smett’s flagrant 
duplicity, of Winchester’s pompous brutality. She 
was indignant at these people’s lack of fair play, and 
she made up her mind that she would hurt them, 
even if it were dangerous for herself. They were 
after the vase for some grave and vital reason. She 
would not tell them where she had hidden it, or 
would they dream of searching Pailloux’s private 
safe for it. “Mr. Coburn,” she continued, “all this 
means something to me.” 

“What?” 

“A matter of principle.” 

“Principle?” # 

“You are a Virginian, aren’t you?” 

“I plead guilty, m’lady.” 

“And, as a Virginian, aren’t there certain princi¬ 
ples you respect—deep down in your heart—even 
though the rest of the world may deem them fool¬ 
ish and quixotic and self-hurting?” 

“I reckon that’s right.” 

“Very well. I am the same way. And one of 
my principles is that I will not quit under fire.” 

“Bravo!” he cried. 

Should she tell him about the murdered Manchu 
woman? The next moment she decided that 
she would not. The consul, too, would say that 


45 


A LADY IN JAIL 

it must have been a case of too much champagne. 
But she told Mr. Coburn she had cabled her 
father. 

“Oh!” he said. “You cabled?” 

“Yes.” And, as he looked at her, shaking his 
head, “What is the matter?” 

“I told you martial law has been proclaimed. All 
cables pass through the censor’s hands.” 

“Oh! You think that my cable-” 

“Was most likely never ticked off at all.” 

“Mr. Coburn,” she said, “won’t you-” 

“Please!” he interrupted. “I know what you 
want me to do, but I can’t. If I send a cable to 
your father in my private capacity, the censor will 
stop it, just as he stopped yours. As to my official 
capacity, I explained to you-” 

“Yes. Your oath of office—the very ticklish po¬ 
litical situation, and”—-bitterly—“it seems that I 
am not an American citizen—legally. Oh, it isn’t 
fair!” 

“I am so sorry. I do wish there was something 
I could do to help you-” 

“You can. I want to know something about Mr. 
Moses d’Acosta and Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen. Do 
vou know them?” 

“Who doesn’t?” . 

“Are they influential in Canton?” 

“Yes—and no. The local officials do not like 
them, in fact, hate them, would like to see them 
dead and buried-” 

“Then,” asked Marie, “seeing how unscrupulous 
these Southern Chinese officials are, why don’t they 
cause them to disappear?” 

“That’s where the rub comes in. D’Acosta and 
Sun Yu-Wen are too rich, too influential If any¬ 
thing happened to them—why—heaven alone knows 
what might come of it.” 


{ 







46 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“Good enough! What do you know about 
Prince Pavel Kokoshkine?” 

“What all the world knows—that he is a Russian 
—an aristocrat—a gentleman—and a former officer 
in the czar’s army. He puzzles me. He is an im¬ 
perialist—an aristocrat—and yet here he is in the 
service of these Southern radicals. It’s beyond 
me.” 

“Where does he live?” 

“On the other side of the river, not far from 
Nan-Hai prison, on the corner of the street of the 
Leaning Plum Tree.” 

“Thank you.” 

The consul rose to go, but Marie put her hand 
on his arm. 

“One second,” she begged. “There’s a British 
sailor across the landing. He is in trouble, too.” 

“Oh—Tommy Higginson?” 

“You know him?” 

The consul laughed. 

“We all do in Canton. Trouble—and serves him 
right. It seems that he has been doing a little pri¬ 
vate gun-running, and so he has put himself out¬ 
side the consular jurisdiction and protection. It 
looks black for him.” 

“You can’t help him out, can you?” 

“Neither I nor my British colleague.” 

“But,” said Marie, “is there a reason in the world 
why you can’t give him—let’s say—a few cigarettes, 
just for the sake of humanity?” 

“I reckon I can.” 

“And—is there any reason why you can’t give 
him some of my cigarettes? Finally, is there any 
reason why, being a Virginia gentleman, you can’t 
turn your back on a lady for a few minutes when she 
asks you nicely—and although you are the consul, 
and under consular oath?” 


A LADY IN JAIL 47 

He looked at her significantly; then he laughed. 

“Very well,” he said, and turned his face to the 
wall. 

She opened her hand-bag and took out a package 
of Bostanioglo’s cigarettes she had bought that 
morning. Rapidly she scribbled a few words on the 
inside of the box, closed it again and handed it to 
the consul. 

“Here you are,” she said. “Give it to Mr. Hig- 
ginson. Tell him the cigarettes are from me. Tell 
him they are good cigarettes, that they were made 
in dear old London. Tell him, furthermore, that 
the advertisement on the inside cover of the box may 
make him think of home. You understand?” 

The consul smiled. 

“I think I heard the scratch of a pencil.” 

“Forget it, please!” 

“I will. Good-night, Miss Campbell!” 

“Good-night, Mr. Coburn! And thanks!” 




CHAPTER V 

HIGGINSON, A. B. 

A FEW seconds after the consul left the babu 
returned. 

“Man,” Marie said, “I am going to take a little 
nap—on that chair there. So would you mind re¬ 
maining outside?” 

“Memsahib, I regret very much, but it is against 


“Don’t be a little chocolate-eclair-colored jack¬ 
ass! See—I’ll curl up on that rocking-chair—and” 
—suiting the action to her words—“I’ll put it right 
near the door. You can stay just beyond the thresh¬ 
old, where you can look at me any time you want 
to. I am tired, very tired, but I know I couldn’t 
sleep if you stay here in the room. Aren’t you 
armed with that big revolver of yours?” 

“But-” 

“Please!” . 

She gave him a brilliant smile, and—thought Ma¬ 
rie—at last he showed certain signs of strictly male 
humanity. He bowed. 

“Yes-s-s, memsahib ,” he replied, and he took his 
place beyond the threshold while she sat on the 
chair near the door, imitating a moment later the 
deep breathing of an exhausted sleeper, but watch¬ 
ing carefully from beneath lowered eyelids and lis¬ 
tening to whatever might happen on the landing. 

48 




HIGGINSON, A. B. 49 

There was silence—swathing, leaden, unbroken, 
except occasionally by the creaking noise of a senti¬ 
nel outside grounding his rifle or the click-clank- 
click of a metal scabbard-tip being dragged against 
the stone pavement as the officers of the night watch 
went on their rounds. 

Marie glanced across her shoulder at the iron- 
grilled windows. It was still night, heavy, deep 
violet, with a froth of stars tossed over the crest of 
the heavens. 

She looked at her wrist-watch. Two o’clock in 
the morning, she could tell, by the rays of the single 
electric bulb on the landing. She felt despair creep¬ 
ing over her soul, and, pluckily, she decided to fight 
it back. So she began to marshal her thoughts as 
logically and constructively as she could. By this 
time she had completely dismissed any idea of com¬ 
ing to terms with Judge Winchester and Pailloux 
and whatever political party and influence they rep¬ 
resented. These men were intriguing, unscrupu¬ 
lous, thoroughly evil. 

But what about Moses d’Acosta, the masterful, 
idealistic Turkish Jew, and about Mandarin Sun 
Yu-Wen? How did they come into the focus of 
this dark-coiling adventure? It seemed that they 
were both dangerous enemies of the Southern radi¬ 
cals—thus, logically, both working for the same 
end. Too, they seemed to have genuine liking and 
sympathy for each other. Yet, she remembered, 
there had been that undercurrent between them as 
if, somehow, they were opposed one against the 
other; and both had been anxious about that little 
Chinese vase which had been the real root of her 
troubles—which had begun with an overdue hotel 
bill and had wound up with her here in a political 
prison. Then there was Prince Pavel Kokoshkine’s 
enigmatic figure, and the Chuen to yan of the Tern- 


50 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

pie of Horrors, whom the murdered Manchu wom¬ 
an had mentioned with her dying breath. What did 
“Shuen to yan” mean? 

Try as she might, she was not able to fit the piec¬ 
es of the puzzle into a reasonable whole. There 
was a missing link, and it consisted in her own 
relation to this mystery—her own and her mother’s. 
So once more her thoughts returned to the latter. 
She must have been a Chinese subject, Tartar or 
Central Asian, but whatever her race and blood, she 
must have been important during life, even from be¬ 
yond death. Marie speculated and wondered. 
What and who were her mother’s people? There 
was that uncle of hers, dead, murdered— Who, 
what had he been? 

Mavropoulos! It sounded to her like a Greek 
name. How could she be connected with it? 

“My word!” she thought. “What a mess!” 

She stretched her cramped limbs a little and 
yawned. But the next moment she imitated again 
a sleeper’s deep breathing as she heard Judge Win¬ 
chester’s pinchbeck Lancashire accents in the corri¬ 
dor: 

“All right, Pailloux. We shall see what the 
man wants.” 

The door being open at a convenient angle and 
the babu’s back not obstructing her vision, she saw 
the two men coming along the corridor, saw 
them, through a minutely raised eyelid, stop at the 
door of her room and peer in. 

“By Jove!” whispered Winchester. “Fast 
asleep! Has nerve—that girl!” 

Then they crossed and entered the room where 
Higginson was imprisoned. 

She heard the judge’s first words: 

“You asked for me?” 

“Yes, yer ’Onor,” replied the sailor. 


HIGGINSON, A. B. 51 

“I suppose you have decided to make a clean 
breast of it, my man.” 

“Well, yer ’Onor, I got some valuable informa¬ 
tion for yer. For a price-” 

“Name it!” 

“I want yer to release me.” 

“I’ll see what can be done. First, the informa¬ 
tion. About the gun-running, eh?” 

“To ’ell with them blanked guns!” came the reply 
in the picaresque diction of the London docks. “It’s 
something different—and a bleedin’ sight more im¬ 
portant, cully!” 

“Oh!” countered the judge. “For instance-” 

Marie sucked in her breath. It was now evident 
to her that the sailor had read and understood the 
message which she had scribbled on the inside of the 
cigarette-box. 

“Yes, yer ’Onor!” said the man. “It’s about a 
vase—funny nyme—’eathenish and chinky-” 

“Sssh!” interrupted Winchester. 

“Sssh!” echoed Pailloux. 

They stepped into the sailor’s room and closed 
the door from the inside, and again there was si¬ 
lence, while Marie waited, excited, expectant. The 
message she had written on the inside cover of the 
box had of necessity been short. But she relied on 
the sailor’s shrewd cockney sense to supply the mis¬ 
sing links, all the more that she had learned from the 
consul that the man was in real danger and would 
grasp at the proverbial straw to save his neck. She 
glanced in the direction of the window. She did not 
want morning to come before she had her chance. 
It was still dark enough outside, with just the faint¬ 
est sign of morning blazing its purple message. 

She waited another five minutes, and then the 
door of the sailor’s room opened and, from beneath 
lowered eyelids, she saw Winchester and Pailloux 





52 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

on the threshold, and between them Higginson, who 
was gesticulating for dear life. 

“Stroike me pink,” he exclaimed, “if I ain’t tell- 
in’ yer Gawd’s truth!” 

“I do not believe you,” said Pailloux. 

“Listen!” continued Higginson. “Call me a san¬ 
guinary organ-grinder’s ring-tailed monkey if I’m 
lyin’ to yer two gents! I tell yer I seen that ’ere 
vase-” 

“Nom d y un nom d’un nom!” interrupted the ho¬ 
tel manager. “Do not name it! Call it ‘the 
thing!’ We told you before that it is dangerous to 
mention it by name, that nobody, except the judge 
and me and perhaps three or four important Chin¬ 
ese officials, know of the thing’s existence.” 

“Wot ho! Wot bloody ho!” cried the sailor 
triumphantly, while Marie blessed his ready mother- 
wit. “If nobody except yerselves and mebbe ’arf a 
dozen toffs knows about this ’ere bloomin’—now— 
thing, then ’ow, in the nyme of me sainted grand¬ 
aunt Priscilla, can / know about this ’ere syme— 
now—thing, eh? Don’t yer see that I’m givin’ it 
to yer straight?” 

“Logical!” suddenly exclaimed the Frenchman. 
“Absolutely logical!” 

“Now ye’re talkin’, Mister Whiskerando!” said 
the sailor. “It’s the truth, don’t yer see?” 

“By Jupiter!” admitted Winchester. “I am be¬ 
ginning to believe it myself!” 

“Truthful ’Arry—that’s wot me mytes calls me 
aboard ship!” cut in Mr. Higginson in a splendid 
outburst of seafaring imagination. 

Winchester took Pailloux to one side and whis¬ 
pered to him earnestly. Then he approached the 
sailor once more. 

“My man,” he said, “we have decided that you 
are speaking the truth. You could not possibly 



HIGGINSON, A. B. 53 

know about the existence of the—ah—thing unless 
—well—unless you knew. And you described the 
thing correctly. You know its name. Very well. 
We shall give you the chance you ask for.” 

“All I wants is ten minutes alone with the lydy,” 
said the sailor. “I’ll myke ’er ’fess up, or me nyme 
ain’t Truthful ’Arry ’Igginson, gents! I knows wot 
to say to ’er! I—” again his imagination surged 
up riotously and magnificently—“I knows a few 
things about ’er that’d myke yer ’air turn gray. Let 
me tell you, gents-” 

“Some other time. We are in a hurry to put our 
hands on the thing.” 

“Right-o! Ten minutes with ’er, mebbe fifteen. 
Alone. That’s all I arsk.” 

“Alone?” objected Monsieur Pailloux. “But 


“I got to talk to her gentle-like first. She won’t 
spill unless I gets ’er confidence first—and we got 
to be alone for that.” 

“Still, I don’t see—” said the Frenchman. 

“We’ll leave the babu in the room. Oh, yes”— 
as Higginson was about to expostulate—“got to be 
done!” He called to the babu. “Hey, there, Hur- 
ree Chuckerjee!” 

The latter approached and salaamed. 

“Yes, sahib? 

“Armed, aren’t you?” 

“Yes, sahib.” 

“Mr. Higginson is going to talk to Miss Camp¬ 
bell for a few minutes, and you’ll stay in the room 
with them.” 

“But—yer ’Onor—” interjected the sailor. 

“You can talk to her in a whisper, Higginson. 
And it’s up to you to watch, Hurree Chuckerjee—• 
understand?” 

“Listen is obey, sahib!” 




54 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“It’s all right,” Winchester said to Pailloux. 
“The windows of the room are barred with iron, 
and there are sentinels in the street.” 

“Very well,” said Higginson. “I’ll talk to ’er. 
And then, if I’m right and I myke the lydy ’fess up, 
all ye’ve got to do is look for the—now—thing 
after she owns up—and, gents, she’ll own up soon 
enough! And then, after ye’ve found it, ye’ll 
squash that there gun-runnin’ indictment against me 
and let me go back to me ship—and wot ho for the 
briny and Liverpool and the bar-maids of the Old 
Crocodile!” 

“Agreed!” said Mr. Winchester. 

A minute later, Marie Campbell simulated sur¬ 
prise and indignation when the babu took her by the 
arm, calling, “Ho, memsahib!” and when immedi¬ 
ately afterward Winchester, flanked by Higginson 
and the Frenchman, walked up to her and told her, 
with a thin laugh, that he wanted “this person, Mr. 
Higginson, able-bodied seaman,” to have a few min¬ 
utes’ private conversation with her. 

“I don’t know Mr.—oh—” she cried, “whatever 
his name!” 

“Aw—lydy,” cut in the sailor, with every appear¬ 
ance of hurt feelings, “don’t yer remember Truth¬ 
ful ’Arry?” He appealed to the judge. “That’s 
gratitude, yer ’Onor! After it was me who ’elped 
’er to-” 

Marie cut in rapidly, afraid the sailor’s imagina¬ 
tion might defeat its own ends. 

“I don’t know you,” she repeated. 

“Don’t you?” smiled the judge. 

“But, Miss Campbell,” exclaimed Higginson, 
winking a watery blue eye at her, “don’t yer recall 
as ’ow yer told me only larst week-” 

“I don’t remember a thing!” 

“You will remember—presently,” said Judge 




HIGGINSON, A. B. 55 

Winchester.^ He turned to the sailor. “Higgin¬ 
son,” he said, “come straight to my private office 
when you are through with Miss Campbell. Know 
where it is, don’t you?” He smiled disagreeably. 

“Yes, yer ’Onor. It’s the third door beyond the 
turning of the corridor, ain’t it?” 

“Mon Dieu, no!” exclaimed the Frenchman. 

“Indeed, no!” echoed Mr. Winchester. “It’s 
the fourth door. Be careful! I shall instruct the 
guards to let you pass.” 

“Thanks, yer ’Onor,” said the sailor, pulling at 
his forelock. The two men walked away, while 
Hurree Chuckerjee and Higginson stepped fully 
into the room, closing the door, the former remain¬ 
ing near the threshold and playing nervously with 
the butt of his revolver while the latter walked up 
to Marie. 

“Now, lydy,” he said in a loud voice, “I ’ad a long 
talk with the judge, and I promised ’im I would 
myke yer ’fess up. Now—come through!” 

“I don’t know you!” 

“Aw, ’ow yer ’urts my feelings!” 

“Leave me alone!” 

“Look a-’ere!” Higginson sat down close to 
Marie and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Wot 
ho, but ye’re a bloomin’ good actress!” 

“Am I not?” Marie whispered back. 

“Right-o! I got yer note, lydy—and now—wot 
are we goin’ to do with it—as the monkey sed when 
’e ’ad grabbed the red-’ot poker?” 

So they conversed in low, tense accents for sev¬ 
eral minutes, while Mr. Hurree Chuckerjee looked 
on, wild-eyed, staring, all the nerves in his cowardly 
body writhing as he saw the powerful play of the 
back muscles beneath the sailor’s thin shirt. For 
he knew these rough seafaring sahibs , and he did 
not trust them—no—not at all. Which proved 


56 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

that he had more than a little common sense as well 
as, evidently, more than a little experience on docks 
and water-fronts in the days before he left Calcutta 
for a life of adventure in yellow China. 

But, after all, it appeared that Mr. Hurree 
Chuckerjee’s fears had been groundless. For just 
at that moment Higginson turned away from the 
girl and walked up to him, a sunny smile in his wat¬ 
ery blue eyes and a laugh on his lips. 

“Mister ’Indu,” he said, “it’s done!” 

“Yes-s-s, sahib?” 

“Right-o! The little lydy ’as decided to jolly 
well spill the truth. ’Aven’t you, Miss Campbell?” 

“Oh, yes,” she said demurely. 

“And now for me interview with the judge,” the 
sailor went on as he crossed to the threshold. “The 
third door, eh, Mr. ’Indu?” 

“No!” cried the latter, waving pudgy, excited 
hands. “The fourth! The judge warned you 
most especially, Higginson sahib!” 

“That’s so,” admitted the able-bodied seaman. 
“Forgetful ’Arry—that’s wot me shipmytes calls 
me, when they don’t call me Truthful ’Arry.” 

“You must not make a mistake about the door!” 
implored the babu . 

“I ’opes as I won’t. Wot’s be’ind that other 
door, cully, that ye’re all so bloody well frightened 
about it?” 

“Nothing, sahib” 

“Right-o! Secret diplomacy—wot?” 

“You must be careful,” repeated the babu. “Per¬ 
haps I had better come with you part of the way— 
until you meet the guards ?” 

“I do think you ’ad better. Although”—the 
sailor hesitated—“are you allowed to leave this 
’ere lydy alone?” 

“It is against regulation fifteen, paragraph eight. 


HIGGINSON, A. B. 57 

But, sahib, the windows are barred and I shall lock 
the door. For the first time in my life I shall there¬ 
fore not adhere strictly to the printed regulations.” 

“Yer are a broad-minded josser!” came the 
hearty reply. “Let’s go!” And Higginson put his 
left arm through the babu y s right with a friendly 
smile, and then, the very next moment, before the 
latter knew what was occurring and how, it seemed 
to him that an entire firmament filled with a million 
bright stars was bursting somewhere in the back 
cells of his brain while a terrible pain shot knifelike 
through his eyes. 

What had really happened was that Higginson 
had suddenly reverted to the shirt-sleeves diploma¬ 
cy and tactics of the quarter-deck. With great ra¬ 
pidity he had drawn his left arm from the babu f s 
right, had turned with catlike agility, had thrust his 
left hand into the babu’s eye, his right into his 
throat, and the man went down as though he had 
been struck by a high-power bullet. 

“Quick! We ain’t got much time!” 

Higginson turned to the girl, and, with her help, 
inside of a few seconds they gagged the babu secure¬ 
ly with the sailor’s handkerchief and the girl’s 
gloves. Working feverishly, they tore the waist- 
shawl from the unconscious man and, with that and 
the sailor’s coat and belt, tied him hand and foot. 
Then the sailor helped himself to the babu*s revolver 
and motioned to Marie to follow him. 

They left the room, quickly closing the door be¬ 
hind them, and a few steps farther down the corri¬ 
dor they met one of the guards in full uniform and 
heavily armed. Higginson walked up to him casu¬ 
ally. 

“Did the judge tell you-” 

“All light. Top-side plenty good!” came the 
reply in pidgin-English, and the Tartar soldier kept 



58 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

on his way, unsuspectingly turning his back while the 
sailor whispered rapidly to the girl: 

“Sorry I ain’t got no time to fool with Queens- 
berry rules. I got to treat ’im as I did ’is nibs back 
in yer room. Can’t afford to ’ave ’im prowl round 

_n 

Again, with tremendous agility, he turned. Up 
flashed his right hand which held the revolver, the 
steel butt hitting the Tartar on the lower part of the 
brain. The man went down without a sound. 

“Got to shyke a leg!” said Higginson to Marie, 
the light of battle in his blue eyes. “Ain’t got no 
time to tie and gag ’im. Still—that sleepin’-powder 
I administered to ’is bean will keep ’im in the arms 
of Murphy for a jolly good while.” 

“You are such a sweet and peaceful soul, Mr. 
Higginson!” smiled the girl. 

“I am!” maintained the sailor stoutly. “Peace¬ 
ful ’i\.rry—that’s wot me pals calls me. I’m a 
bleedin’ lamb until some blighter steps on me toes 
—” He interrupted himself, pointed. “Look! 
’Ere’s the turning!” They made it at a run, hand 
in hand. There was no other guard about. “Now, 
then—” as they stopped in front of the third door. 

“Shall we—” breathed Marie, wondering what 
lay beyond the threshold. 

“We bloomin’ well got to!” replied the sailor. 
“It’s our only chance, lydy.” He touched the door 
rather gingerly. “Mebbe I was a fool doin’ wot 
yer arsked me in that there note yer wrote on the 
cigarette-box! Well—never mind. I like the col¬ 
or of yer eyes. Come; step into me parlor.” The 
door opened easily enough. He peered in. “Gawd 
—ain’t it dark? Well—can’t be ’elped. In we 
pops!” 

They crossed the threshold and groped their way 
down some stairs slowly, carefully, perhaps a cou- 



HIGGINSON, A. B. 59 

pie of dozen steps, worn slippery and hollow as by 
the tread of hundreds of naked feet, down, straight, 
down. There was not even the faintest ray of 
light, and the air was heavy, terribly oppressive, 
stagnant. But they held on their course, carefully 
setting foot before foot, hands stretched out at right 
angles from their bodies to give warning of unfa¬ 
miliar objects, and finally they landed dead against 
a wall. 

Presently, by groping tentatively here and there, 
they discovered that they had debouched on a nar¬ 
row landing which stretched right and left. Which 
way should they go, they wondered. They had to 
turn somewhere, and so they chose the left, for no 
particular reason. But often since Marie specu¬ 
lated what would have happened to them and how 
the whole adventure would have ended had they 
gone the other way. 

Still they kept on, the sailor in front, Marie fol¬ 
lowing, until suddenly there was a dull noise. Hig- 
ginson let out an oath. 

“Gawd! That hurts!” 

It appeared that he had struck his forehead a ter¬ 
rific bump against a low beam that barred the way. 
He leaned down and investigated. 

“There’s space beyond. Careful, lydy!” 

Bending down, they stepped under the beam and, 
by feeling, found that they were in a small cubicle, 
less than five feet in height and no bigger than six 
or seven feet square. The road seemed to end 
there. They crouched low, wondering what next to 
do. 

“I’m goin’ to strike a match,” whispered the 
sailor. 

Up flared the match with a brutal lemon flare, 
and they looked about quickly. There was no door 
—nothing, except- 



60 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“Look!” said Marie, and pointed at the low ceil¬ 
ing where, square in the center, a curved metal han¬ 
dle was protruding. The match flickered out. 
“What now?” asked Marie. 

“Got to try the ’andle, lydy,” said Higginson, 
with British stoicism. 

A jerk and twist—and suddenly half the ceiling 
slid to one side, into a well-oiled groove, sending 
down a flood of haggard light. 

“Come on!” said the sailor, and he lifted the 
girl through the hole in the ceiling and followed 
after. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 

T HE room in which Marie and Higginson found 
themselves was empty. It was lit by the dull- 
red, scanty glow which came from an open-work 
silver brazier swinging on delicate jeweled chains 
from the vaulted ceiling. A tiny window was set 
high on a wall, and a door led away from the left. 
On the wall opposite, another window, lower than 
the first and larger in size, was boarded by heavy 
wooden planks painted with bright and intricate de¬ 
signs of snarling golden dragons in a tossing sea of 
crimson and black. Higginson studied the first 
window speculatively. 

“Too ’igh up,” he decided, “even for an able- 
bodied seaman, and too small to crawl through— 
chiefly you in your evenin’ dress, lydy—why, it’d 
rip to shreds!” 

“Let’s investigate the other window.” 

After a few minutes’ examination they found a 
small crack in the boarding and, since the sailor’s 
knife had been confiscated in prison, they used wom¬ 
an’s favorite weapon, a hairpin, until they had en¬ 
larged the crack sufficiently to look through. At 
first they saw nothing except a mass of varicolored 
incense smoke. But presently Marie’s eyes grew 
used to it. She stared—and let out a scream, which 
she quickly suppressed. 

“Wot’s wrong?” asked Higginson. 

“Nothing much—only, I think, by escaping from 
61 


62 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


the prison, we rather jumped from the frying-pan 
into the fire. Look!” She pointed through the 
thin crack. “It’s the Temple of Horrors!” 

“ ’Orrors is bloomin’ well right,” admitted Hig- 
ginson as, emerging from the swirls of incense 
smoke, he saw looming up ghastly images of people 
being killed by slow Chinese tortures; as presently, 
even as they watched, a farther door opened into 
the temple and, with a savage thumping of drums, 
a clash of cymbals and ,a shrilling of reed pipes, a 
procession of masked Chinese priests entered, led 
by a giant high priest who was naked to the waist. 

They were followed by a dozen torch-bearers, 
their flaming torches lighting up the interior with 
many colors. Then came a procession of soldiers. 
They were officers, judging from the embroidered 
insignia on their tunics, and they bore swords and 
pistols and daggers which, as if asking for divine 
blessing, they deposited at the feet of the idols, 
while, at the same moment, a chant arose, rather a 
long-drawn wail, in Chinese monosyllables. The 
high priest turned. He faced the crowd. He lift¬ 
ed his hands in an annular, straight up-and-down 
motion, commanding silence, which dropped like a 
pall. Then he bowed three times before a great 
statue of the Buddha. Another priest handed him 
a human skull on gold chains that was filled with 
burning embers. He blew upon them till they shot 
forth tongues of vermilion light. He bowed again, 
and like a herald, roared out a single word: 

“Kieng-see!” 

(t Kleng-see! >} The crowd took up the word in a 
mad, whirling chorus, and the sailor clutched Ma¬ 
rie’s arm. 

“I knows that word!” he whispered raucously. 
“I’ve picked up a bit of Mongol lingo ’ere and there. 
A sacrifice—that’s wot the word means! That 


THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 63 

sanguinary blighter is arskin’ for a sacrifice! I 
knows wot Vs drivin’ at! I fought in the Boxer 
war. Lydy—this ’ere ain’t no plyce for two peace¬ 
ful Anglo-Saxons!” He dragged her away. “Wot’ll 
we do?” 

“The door!” She pointed at it. 

“And then wot?” 

“Carry on, Mr. Higginson!” 

“You’re a brick, Miss Campbell!” 

“And you’re a peach, Mr. Higginson!” 

He gave a gallant flourish. 

“I always did like Yanks, Miss Campbell.” 

They crossed to the door, opened it carefully, 
listened, looked. There was no sound. Then they 
stepped out into another corridor, bright-lit with 
swinging yellow lamps. 

It was really more than a corridor—more like a 
long hall, very high, with a vaulted ceiling. Up to 
a height of seven feet the walls were covered with 
stucco, white on white, ivory and snowy enamel 
skilfully blended with shiny white lac, and overlaid 
with a silver-threaded spider’s web of arabesques, 
as exquisite as the finest Mechlin lace, and of Sans¬ 
krit quotations in the Devanagari script, showing 
that the temple had been built many, many centu¬ 
ries earlier, in the golden days when Hindu priests 
first brought the peaceful words of the Lord Gau¬ 
tama Buddha from across the Himalayas and before 
the Mongols twisted the gentle message according 
to their tortuous, mazed mentality. 

The upper part of the walls, too, must have been 
decorated by ancient Indian craftsmen. For above 
the white stucco was a procession, a panorama of 
conventionalized Hindu frescoes—an epitome, a 
resume of all Hindustan’s myths and faiths and leg¬ 
ends and superstitions. 

The tale of a nation’s life, Asia’s civilization and 


64 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

faith—yes, and crimes and virtues and sufferings, 
here, in front of them, and Higginson was strangely 
silent, while a thought came over Marie that here 
she was an intruder, not physically but mentally. 

“What can we do?” she asked out loud. “Hob¬ 
son’s choice, don’t you think, Mr. Higginson?” 
“Right-o!” 

So they walked on, down that everlasting corri¬ 
dor, with all Asia’s gods jeering at them from the 
wall paintings, and looking left and right for a 
door, a window or some other avenue of escape, 
when very suddenly Marie was startled into com¬ 
plete immobility. 

Directly in front of them the corridor came to 
an end, or, rather, it broadened out, swept out into 
a circular hall, the walls covered with slabs of deli¬ 
cate marble carved so that they looked like sculp¬ 
tured embroideries, with splendid Pekingese furni¬ 
ture of black teakwood, a profusion of enamel- 
silver ornaments, and the floor covered with huge 
Ming rugs of orange, gold and imperial yellow. 

“Gkwd!” whispered Higginson. 

Marie was near fainting. She steadied herself 
by clutching frantically the sailor’s strong arm. 

And yet the thing which had stirred them so pro- 
foundlv was only a face—that of an old man, 
wrinkled, brown, immobile on a scrawny neck, 
which was like the stalk of some poisonous, incredi¬ 
ble iungle flower, the body, arms and legs wrapped 
in layers of thin muslin, sitting upright on a great 
chair of carved rosewood that was filled with a pro¬ 
fusion of pillows in embroidered imperial Chien- 
lung silk. 

A hard face to picture, to describe, as Marie saw 
it there, suddenly, with a saraband of purple shad¬ 
ows bringing it into stark relief—it would take the 
hand of a Rodin to shape the meaning of it, the 



) 


THE TEMPLE OF ^ORRORS 65 

taint of death, the flavor of dread tortures which 
surrounded it like a miasmic haze. The face of a 
plague-spotted, latter-day Roman emperor it seemed 
to her, blended with the unhuman, meditating, crush¬ 
ing calm of a Chinese sage—heavy-jowled, thin¬ 
lipped, terribly broad across the temples, and with 
an expression in the pin-points of the black eyes like 
the sins of a slaughtered soul. All Marie could 
see and feel was the existence of those features in 
front of her—grotesque, monstrous, unhuman—and 
she wanted to shriek. 

Perhaps the whole sensation, the whole flash of 
emotions lasted only a moment. Perhaps it was 
contained in the fraction of the second it took her 
and the sailor to pass from the corridor, properly 
speaking, into the hall. At all events, suddenly she 
was herself again, and she could tell by Higginson’s 
tautening biceps beneath the pressure of her fingers 
that he, too, was regaining a semblance of compo¬ 
sure. 

She now jerked her wits into a fair imitation of 
nerve-control and, side by side with Higginson, took 
a few steps forward, slowly and deliberately, until 
she was within a few feet of the face. And then, 
all at once, it lost its stark immobility. The thin 
lips trembled and curled. They laughed—yet it 
was not exactly a laugh—rather a harsh, ghastly, 
scraping sort of cachinnation. 

“Wot ho!” cried the sailor, ‘with hysterical 
forced gaiety. “I thought as yer were a bleedin’ 
mummy, me lad!” 

And then the lips opened over toothless gums and 
pronounced words in good English: 

“Ah—Miss Campbell!” 

“Oh—you—you know—who—I-” 

“Who you are? Of course. Am I not the 
Chuen to yan of this temple—of all our sacred 



66 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

brotherhood? I know a great many things—some 
of which I should know—and some of which”— 
again he laughed thinly, mockingly—“I should not 
know. And I am glad, very glad indeed, that you 
decided to come here to me of your own free will. 
Your reward will be resplendent. I punish—yes— 
harshly. B\it I also reward—generously!” 

Marie’s mind worked with the instantaneous flash 
of a camera-shutter. This, then, was the Chuen to 
yan, she said to herself, the man—whatever the 
words meant—whom the Manchu woman had ac¬ 
cused with her dying breath, of whom Judge Win¬ 
chester had spoken. He was quite evidently the 
man in back of all this trooping, coiling maze of 
mysteries and intrigues. Then she considered that 
the Chuen to yan had assumed she had come here 
of her own free will. Here was a card ready to 
hand, a' trump-card if she played it well, and she 
would play it. She was only afraid of what the 
sailor might do, might say. And so she spoke very 
quickly. 

“This man,” she said, “came with me. He is my 
confidential servant.” 

She waited, tensely expectant, wondering if the 
lie would hold good, immensely relieved when the 
Chinese waved the sailor’s presence aside with his 
hand. 

“Yes,” he said; “some of these coarse-haired bar¬ 
barians are quite trustworthy.” He pointed to the 
pillow at his feet. “Sit down here, child,” he con¬ 
tinued in a kindly voice. She obeyed. She looked 
up at: the man, and he stared back at her with black, 
unwinking eyes. 

“You have the thing with you?” he asked. 

“The Tchou-fou-yao vase?” 

“What else is there which might matter to me—■ 
to us? Give it to me.” 


THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 67 

“I have not got it here. You see”—she hesi¬ 
tated—'“I did not trust myself to-” 

“Oh, yes! You did wisely. It is better to be 
careful. D’Acosta is no fool. Nor is Sun Yu- 
Wen. Where is the vase?” 

“Send some reliable servants with me—after¬ 
ward some soldiers—and I’ll lead them straight to 
the hiding-place.” 

“Immediately!” 

His left hand reached up, about to strike a gong 
above his head. But she interrupted him. 

“Wait!” she said. 

“Why?” 

“First—tell me—you spoke of reward—a gener¬ 
ous reward-” 

He smiled sardonically. 

“Greedy, eh? Hayahl! Children are greedy— 
and women—and sparrows-” 

Marie laughed frankly. Here was a chance at 
repartee after her own heart. 

“Can you blame them?” she countered. “If 
women don’t look out for themselves, certainly the 
male of the species will not.” 

He laughed, too. 

“A lesson you learned in America, eh? Perhaps 
—by the Buddha—a wise lesson. And so you-” 

“Yes,” smiled Marie; “first the reward.” 

“What shall it be?” he asked. “Gold or-” 

“Power!” said Marie in a whisper, wondering if 
she had played trumps. 

“Power?” The man stared at her. “You are 
true to your blood. And suppose I give you power, 
how will I know that I can trust you? Have we of 
the sacred brotherhood”—he drew up his shriveled, 
age-worn body—“the sacred brotherhood which 
we, still, though the coarse-haired barbarians once 
called it the Boxers, name by its ancient and honor- 







68 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


able title”—he whispered it with eery, sincere rev¬ 
erence—“ ‘the Society of Augustly Harmonious 
Fists’—have we of the brotherhood, have the dead 
patriots who belonged to other similar brother¬ 
hoods ever been able to trust you—the people of 
your blood?” 

Marie looked up. “The people of your blood,” 
the man had said—and what had he meant? 

“But—” She stopped, uncertain how to pro¬ 
ceed without showing her ignorance. 

“You have always been, our enemies,” the man 
continued. “You came as foreigners, conquering 
barbarians! You never assimilated with us—with 
the black-haired race. You do not look as we do. 
You do not dream and aim as we do. As barbari¬ 
ans you came; as barbarians you remained—what¬ 
ever you call yourselves, Manchus, Tartars, Turks 
or what-not! Once, perhaps, you were Asiatics— 
but you mixed your blood during the many cen¬ 
turies you lived in Russia, in Germany, in the West 
—and as foreigners you came among us. Thus”— 
the man seemed swept on by a tremendous, bitter 
sincerity of purpose—“you always stood by the 
other foreigners when they invaded China, and 
robbed and killed and enslaved-” 

“No!” Marie interrupted him. “You are 
wrong. They did not come to murder and rob. 
War—yes—it could not be helped. But they came 
to China to bring civilization and trade—because 
they take an interest in the destinies of China, of 
Asia-” 

“So?” sneered the Chuen to yan. “I have been 
told that it is dangerous for the yellow man if the 
white man takes an interest in his affairs. There is 
Hongkong; there is French Indo-China; there is— 
hayah! —they came to trade, to—ah—civilize. And 
# they remained to rule, to rob! But you must for- 




THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 69 

give me. I am rude, tactless. For you yourself 
are d. Westerner—you are white.” 

“Am I?” Once more Marie decided to play 
boldly. 

“Decidedly.” 

“And yet the Southern republic claims me as a 
subject.” 

“A political trick—nothing else.” 

“But a trick founded on fact! For there was my 
mother-” 

“Bah!” cut in the Chuen to yan. “She was a for¬ 
eigner—if not in citizenship, then in blood. And 
so was your mother’s father; so was your uncle. 
Foreigners all! Enemies! What if your uncle, 
as did your mother’s father and his father before 
him, did prefer the ancient Mongol title? What 
if he did like to hear himself addressed as the ‘Ssu 
Yueh,’ ‘Chief of the Four Mountains’?” 

Marie listened, intensely interested, as the mys¬ 
terious scroll of her mother’s family history was un¬ 
rolled before her eyes. 

“What of all that?” continued the Chinese. “His 
real name was Mavropoulos. He used it when he 
traveled in Europe, when he intrigued against us 
with Russia and Germany and France and the rest 
of the Western powers, and when he went north to 
intrigue with the Manchus, the aristocrats—foreign¬ 
ers like himself. And he sided with the foreigners 
until he died, while we of the south tried—Buddha, 
how we tried!—to save China, to make her inde¬ 
pendent. And so”—he made a slicing gesture—“he 
was killed, and even in death he tried to cheat us. 
There were only two of those Tchou-fou-yao vases 
that held the ancient symbol of dominion. One he 
had; the other belonged to your mother, his only 
relative, and your father took it away when he left 
China after your mother’s death. Your uncle de- 



V h 

70 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

stroyed the one that belonged to him just before he 
died—smashed it into a dozen pieces so that nobody 
could read the hidden message pictured on the in¬ 
side.” He laughed. “Your uncle did not know; 
he never guessed that Destiny was on the side of 
Canton—that you would come back to China in the 
hour of China’s need, the ancient symbol in your pos¬ 
session-” 

The girl was carried away by the Chuen to yan’s 
passionate outburst, and it was the sailor’s warning 
cough which brought her to a realization of her im¬ 
minent danger. By this time, one of the other 
guards must have found the soldier whom Higgin- 
son had knocked down, or the man must have re¬ 
gained consciousness. There was very little time to 
be lost. 

“You are wrong,” she said in a clear, steady 
voice. “At least, where I am concerned. I shall 
return the vase to you. Send for some of your sol¬ 
diers, so that they can accompany me and”—point¬ 
ing at Higginson—“my servant to the hiding- 
place.” 

“Good—by Buddha and by Buddha!” The 
Chinese struck the gong. 

The girl smiled. 

“I forgot! I should like to ask one favor.” 

“Name it.” 

She indicated her thin charmeuse frock, her bare 
head. 

“I came directly from dinner,” she said, “on a 
sudden impulse. And my servant, too—he is still 
in his working-clothes-” 

“The Buddha once remarked that vanity is wom¬ 
an’s most human illusion,” he replied, with a laugh. 
“Very well. Over there”—he pointed to a huge 
chest in the corner—“you will find what you want.’’ 

And when, a few minutes later, half a dozen stal- 


i 




THE TEMPLE OF HQRRORS 71 

wart Chinese soldiers, led by an officer, entered, 
Marie and Higginson were transformed, at least 
in externals, into fair imitations of two Chinese, in 
embroidered robes, mutton-pie caps and neat, black- 
velvet slippers with padded soles. The Chuen to 
yan turned to the captain of the guard with a flow of 
Chinese monosyllables, but Marie interrupted him 
quickly. 

“By the way,” she said, “there’s one thing I would 
like to tell you-” 

“Yes?” 

“D’Acosta and Sun Yu-Wen-” 

“A Turk and a Manchu! Dogs both!” 

“Yes—but clever dogs. They have lots of peo¬ 
ple in their employ, haven’t they?” 

“They employ many spies. Why?” 

“Well, if I were you, I would tell those soldiers 
not to walk alongside of me and my servant, but to 
follow us at quite a distance. No use drawing at¬ 
tention to us—to show the way to d’Acosta’s and 
Sun Yu-Wen’s spies-” 

The Chinese bowed. 

“A cobra and a woman for shrewdness!” he re¬ 
marked admiringly. “You are right.” 

Again he spoke to the captain, who saluted and 
walked up to Marie, drawing a handkerchief from 
his tunic, while a soldier stepped up to Higginson. 

“You will be blindfolded on your way to the 
street through the temple,” said the Chuen to yan . 
“A necessary precaution, you understand?” 

“Yes,” said Marie. 

“I don’t care,” whispered the sailor, “as long as 
I gets out o’ this ’ere Temple of ’Orrors.” 

Thus, blindfolded, Marie and Higginson were 
led through a number of corridors, upstairs and 
down, out of the temple. Out on the street the 
captain of the guard removed the blindfolds. 





72 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“Lead,” he said. “We follow.” 

“Right-o!” replied Marie. 

“Right bloomin’-o!” echoed the sailor; and they 
walked on, the soldiers following at a distance of 
sixty steps beneath the violet vault of the dying 
night. 

Just as they turned the first corner, they heard a 
shout from the direction of the temple—a loud 
shout that echoed and reverberated, sharp, ominous. 
It tore through the gloom of the dying night like 
the point of a knife, but was swallowed the next 
moment by a hunched mass of sounds as, here, 
there and everywhere, the doors of the houses 
opened and the early-morning working population 
poured out. 

Not yet morning; but already China, never 
asleep, ceaselessly working to feed its ever hungry, 
never-satiated maw, was preparing for the morn¬ 
ing task. 

Blue-bloused coolies moved through the streets in 
an endless procession, each sure of his aim and ob¬ 
ject. There were men riding in two-wheeled car¬ 
riages, surmounted by vaulted silk covers; oth¬ 
ers, rich merchants, drove in low victorias crowned 
with embroidered canopies. Came peasants on 
foot, on mules, on donkeys—fruit-venders—their 
fiery-colored produce piled high on balanced bas¬ 
kets, and it was finally, just as Marie and Higgin-. 
son neared the second corner, that they saw their 
chance. The street here narrowed greatly as a 
Taoist temple jutted out, with a bizarre massing of 
pagoda towers and sharp-angled walls that were a 
mass of color, pink, mauve, blue, and yellow, lit by 
a huge paper lantern to the left of the entrance, 
which proclaimed in Mandarin ideographs that this 
was a lipai, a place of worship. 

At that moment, the cortege of a funeral was 


THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 73 

passing, and as the soldiers stopped temporarily to 
give way, Higginson and Marie, for the same rea¬ 
son, pressed close against a wall. 

At the head of the procession-came fantastically 
dressed servants bearing standards, insignia of rank 
and artificial flowers, all glittering brightly in the 
light of many torches; other servants rubbed bronze 
gongs with scarlet devil-sticks. Then came a priest, 
who mumbled long-winded verses from the u Ching - 
Kong-Ching,” and then, garbed in white, the chief 
mourner, directly in front of a crimson-covered 
catafalque. They all walked slowly, ceremoniously, 
but without the slightest indication of piety. Why 
should they? Canton is old. China is old. Many 
had died; many more will die. And the women in 
the mourners’ coaches at the tail-end of the proces¬ 
sion seemed to know it. For they chattered and 
laughed, and leaned from the carriages, exchanging 
highly spiced compliments with the crowd. 

At the very end came a number of empty coaches. 
By the time these vehicles appeared, the torch- 
bearers had already turned the corner, and the 
street was again in darkness. The soldiers were 
screened from the two huddled against the wall by 
the line of coaches, and Marie, after a quick word 
in Higginson’s ear, opened the door of one and 
slipped inside, the sailor following. And so, 
crouched on the floor of the carriage, they were car¬ 
ried past the soldiers, away from the Temple of 
Horrors, out into the heart of Canton. 

“Out again, in again!” whispered Marie. 

“Right-o!” rejoined the sailor. He closed his 
eyes. “Wyke me up when we gets to Piccadilly!” 

The cortege ambled on for about ten minutes, 
and then, thanks to the practical side of the'Chinese 
nature, the two got another chance. For while it 
is a laudable deed to honor a deceased guild-brother 


74 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

by sending empty carriages in sign of mourning, 
there is no use of piling up expenses. So, within 
sight of the cemetery, and since the gatekeeper lev¬ 
ies toll on everybody and everything that passes be¬ 
neath the sacred portals, the empty coaches re¬ 
mained without, and presently the drivers climbed 
down from their boxes, tied the horses and mules, 
and sought refreshment in a little tavern a couple of 
blocks away. 

By now the sun had risen still higher, but—and 
for this the fugitives were grateful—a thick mist 
had rolled up from the river. They looked warily 
about, and left their hiding-place when they found 
that they were alone. 

“I know this ’ere town like a book,” Higginson 
said proudly. “This is what the chinks call the 
K’ung-ti, the Deserted Quarter.” 

It was an appropriate name. For, surrounded 
on all sides by a packed, greasy wilderness of popu¬ 
lous streets, it was a hopeless mass of ruins. At 
the farther end of the street was a tall wooden mon¬ 
umental gate. 

“At the time of the Boxer trouble,” the sailor 
went on, “them local Canton ruffians murdered ’ere 
a whole bloomin’ lot of whites, and then this ’ere 
block of ’ouses was destroyed, as a sort of punish¬ 
ment. A lot them chinks cared! They build new 
’ouses.” He looked for a cigarette and a match, 
found, lit up, and looked questioningly at Marie 
Campbell. “And now, lydy, wot?” 

She thought rapidly. She had no idea where she 
might find d’Acosta or Sun Yu-Wen. But she re¬ 
called that the dying Manchu woman had told her 
about the “friend” to whom she should go, and he, 
she had figured out, must be Prince Pavel Kokosh- 
kine; she recalled, too, the American consul having 
told her where the Russian lived—on the other side 


THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 75 

of the river, not far from the Nan-Hai prison. She 
gave Higginson the address. 

“Know the place?” she wound up. 

The sailor inclined his head ruefully. 

“I knows most prisons in this ’ere dump,” he said, 
“ ’cause o’ them chinks frequently and unjustly mis- 
tykin’ me most innercent actions. It ain’t far. 
Let’s go down to the river.” 

“Where is it?” 

He pointed at the monumental gate. 

“Just through there and down the ’ill. Syfe 
enough. There ain’t no ’ouses there.” 

They reached the river in safety, just where there 
was an anchorage for boats and launches. The 
sailor leading, they made their way to a spot where, 
tied to a low thorn-bush, was a native boat, a sam¬ 
pan. They waited for a few seconds, wondering 
if the fisherman who owned it was anywhere about, 
x But there was no sound, not the faintest sign of life. 
Marie stared across the river—it was a symphony 
of drowsy murmurs and fleeting, veiled shadows. 
Safety lay there, if anywhere, she thought. She 
said so to the sailor. He shook his head dubiously. 

“We’ll see in ’arf a moment,” he replied, “as the 
josser remarked when ’e put ’is last ’arf-crown on a 
rank outsider.” 

Higginson jumped into the sampan, which tilted 
and careened dangerously. He stretched out a 
hand and helped Marie in, then untied the rope with 
a sailor’s skill. They were off, the man rowing at a 
good clip, putting the full weight of his shoulders 
to the oars, while the girl sat in the stern, directing 
the course with the quaint, square Chinese rudder. 
A hard pull it was; for the river, bloated by the 
spring monsoons, was a turbulent, yellow giant. 
Twice she changed seats with Higginson when his 
arms got numbed. Steadily the southern shore 


76 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

slipped away from them, while they bore dowiTon 
their course, dead toward the promontory which 
Higginson said was their goal. Near shore their 
task became more difficult. For a wind had sprung 
up which moved heavily against them, trailing gray 
sheets of rain-laden clouds. It made the light sam¬ 
pan bob to windward, and they had their work cut 
out to keep on a steady course. 

Finally they reached shore and walked up the hill 
that rose before them. 

“ ’Ere you are!” said the sailor, pointing straight 
ahead. “Me old friend—the Nan-’Ai prison!” 

“Looks more like a temple to me.” 

“Used to be one—before them practical-minded 
Southern chinks turned it into a jail.” 

She saw the fantastic, exaggerated contour of the 
pagoda roof, burnished, enameled in spots, mirror¬ 
ing the rays of the sun a thousandfold, like countless 
intersecting rainbows. From the window near the 
roof a shaft of light stretched out like a long, os¬ 
seous yellow hand. 

Higginson walked steadily on, with the girl fol¬ 
lowing. So far they had not met a single human 
being, but, as they neared the top of the hill where 
the pagoda-prison opened to the road with a huge 
gate, they were halted by the snick of a breech-bolt 
and a raucous voice—evidently a challenge—in Chi¬ 
nese. But Marie let out a whoop of joy when the 
sentinel stepped forth from behind a tree, rifle in 
hand, for, in spite of his Chinese uniform, there was 
no doubt that he was a European. 

“Hello!” she cried. “I am glad to see you.” 

The man smiled. But he shook his head. 

“Nie! Nie!” he replied. “No Englees! Russ- 
ky—Russian-” 

“Wot d’yer mean ‘Russian?’ ” asked the sailor. 
“Can’t yer talk the king’s bloody English?” 



THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 


77 


“Nie” The man laughed. 

“Why, yer poor benighted Bolshevik-” 

At once, as he heard the one word, the soldier’s 
smile disappeared and gave way to an expression of 
wolfish ferocity. He picked up his rifle and broke 
into a flood of excited Russian. 

Higginson jumped back. 

“’Ave a ’eart!” he cried. “Ain’t yer got no 
sense of humor, yer silly posser? I didn’t mean to 
call yer a Bolshevik. Honest to Gawd I didn’t!” 

Marie stepped between the two men, smiling bril¬ 
liantly at the Russian. 

“Me—want—see—prince,” she said, very loud, 
and in that broken English which people, for some 
mysterious psychological reason, employ when 
speaking to small children and large foreigners. 
“Savvy?” 

“That oughter fetch ’im,” commented the sailor 
admiringly. 

“Nie ” replied the Russian. 

“Look here!” The girl returned to the attack. 
“See—Prince—Kokoshkine!” 

“Ah!” A light of understanding eddied up in 
the man’s eyes. “Pavel Alexandrovitch?” 

“I—want—speak—to—him—savvy?” She ges¬ 
ticulated wildly to make the man understand. “Get 
me? Kokoshkine—Prince Kokoshkine-” 

“Da, da, moya dorogoyaf” The Russian smiled. 
“Yes, yes, my dear!” 

It was evident that the man understood. He 
whistled shrilly. A few minutes later another sol¬ 
dier came from a little outbuilding, which seemed to 
be the guard-house. The first gave hirn rapid in¬ 
structions in Chinese, and turned, motioning to the 
two fugitives to follow him. 

“Rather early to be about,” said Higginson, as 
they passed through the gate; “ ’ardly four bells. I 




78 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

’ave an idea as ’ow ’is ’ighness will still be in the 
arms of Murphy.” 

But, in spite of the early hour, they found the in¬ 
ner courtyard, a huge, stone-paved affair, crammed 
with human life, soldiers as well as civilians. The 
soldiers were hard at work, drilling, mostly in sober 
brown uniforms—Chinese with a sprinkling of Tar¬ 
tars. But some of the officers were Europeans, evi¬ 
dently Russians, and still in the uniforms of the 
czar’s army. 

They passed some batteries practicing drum-fire 
with blank shells, and a troop of cavalry, who came 
on, straight, lances at the carry, thundering across 
the hard-baked drill-ground, their horses mostly 
new, shaggy mounts, not yet broken to the roll and 
sob of the guns. Finally they crossed the great 
parade-ground, and, through another metal-studded 
gate, passed into an outer hall, where a liveried 
Chinese servant received them. 

The soldier spoke to him, and the other bowed 
and departed, to return shortly afterward, accom¬ 
panied by a tall Russian, dressed in a general’s uni¬ 
form—a very handsome man, dark, clean-shaven, 
with a short, softly curved nose and straight black 
eyebrows which divided his gray eyes from the high 
forehead. He wore on his tunic the Cross of Saint 
Vladimir. 

“I am Kokoshkine,” he said, clicking his spurred 
heels. “And you —^-mademoiselle - >y 

“I am Miss Campbell—whom you invited to din¬ 
ner to-night. But—would you mind offering me 
breakfast instead? I am positively starved!” 

Kokoshkine smiled. He bent over her hand and 
kissed it. 

“You are just in time,” he replied. “I was about 
to sit down to my morning meal.” His English 
was perfect, with hardly a suspicion of Slav purr; 



THE TEMPLE OF HORRORS 79 

and Marie, quick at reading character, as quick at 
making up her mind in human relations, liked him 
at once. He turned to the soldier, speaking in Rus¬ 
sian, and then asked Higginson to accompany the 
other. “Hungry, eh? Could you do with a steak?” 

“My word!” came the enthusiastic reply. “Could 
I do with fifty bloomin’ steaks!” 

“And a whisky and soda?” 

“Dook”—the title was conferred honestly— 
“them is the first kind words I ’eard since I landed 
in this ’ere ’eathen town!’ 

Higginson pulled at his forelock and followed 
the soldier out of the room, while Kokoshkine held 
open the door to the next apartment, where the ta¬ 
ble was already set—very exquisitely, with delicate 
Chinese egg-shell porcelain, Russian silver samovar 
and tea-glass, and a profusion of flowers, in strange 
contrast to the martial simplicity of the room, the 
military maps on the walls, the soldier’s kit here and 
there on table and chairs. 

“Another cover!” he ordered the soft-slippered 
Mongol servant. 


CHAPTER VII 


“death to the foreigners!” 

FEW minutes later, sitting across from Prince 



Pavel Alexandrovitch Kokoshkine, Marie did 
justice to a hearty Russian breakfast with a hearty 
American appetite. Occasionally, out of sheer, un¬ 
thinking human liking and sympathy, she smiled at 
her host, who smiled back and who, when thrice 
she put down fork and cup, saying, “I want to tell 
you—ask you—” stopped her with a gesture. 

“There is no hurry, Miss Campbell,” he said. 
“Eat—rest yourself. Are you in trouble?” 

“Yes.” 

“I thought so. We’ll straighten it out for you— 
never fear!” 

She believed that he would. 

Several times the breakfast was interrupted by 
officers, Chinese and Russians, who came in, made 
reports, and were sent off with short, crisp words of 
command, and also by the sound—from a large 
maneuver field at the other end of the promontory, 
the prince explained to her—as the batteries there 
did target-practice with blank shells. 

“Peaceful sort of life you are living here!” she 
remarked in one brief interval of silence. 

He smiled. 

Marie forgot her own quandary as she remem¬ 
bered what she had heard about this man, the im¬ 
perialist, the former officer in the czar’s army, now 


80 


DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 81 


drilling Cantonese troops, in the service of these 
Southern Chinese radicals, whose ideals must have 
been the very opposite of his own. With American 
directness she cut in on his hesitation. 

“You are an aristocrat, a czarist, aren’t you?” 

“The czar is dead, mademoiselle ” 

“All right. But you are still an aristocrat.” 

“Decidedly.” 

“Then why do you-” 

“Made?noiselle —please—we will not discuss my 
personal affairs. You came here, I take it, to talk 
about your own affairs.” 

She was a little nettled. 

“Oh, very well,” she replied. Then, quite sud¬ 
denly, her slight ill humor disappeared. After all, 
the man was right. She had been rash, tactless. “I 
beg your pardon,” she said, smiling at him frankly. 

“Oh—I did not mean to-” 

“But I do beg your pardon. Really—truly! I 
should not have asked you. And now”—finishing 
her last glass of tea—“I want to tell you-” 

“Do, Miss Campbell!” 

“I am in a frightful mess, and Liu Po-Yat told 
me to come to you—at least, I guessed it was you 
she meant.” 

“Oh—then she spoke before she died?” 

“You know that she-” 

“Was murdered? Yes, Miss Campbell. I 
know”—he smiled—“a great deal—pardon—of 
what affects you.” 

“Seeing that my father is not here to correct my 
language, I suppose I may say what is on my mind 
—and express it exactly the way I feel?” 

“Of course.” 

“Very well. You’ve said a mouthful, Prince!” 
And while he laughed, she went on: “I would have 
been tremendously disappointed if you had not 






82 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


known all about me. Why should you have been 
the one exception in Canton? Why should you 
have been slighted? Everybody else here knows 
all about me—except my little self. Moses d’Acos¬ 
ta, Sun Yu-Wen, Monsieur Pailloux, Judge Win¬ 
chester, the Chuert to yan in the Temple of Hor- 


“Oh,” he exclaimed, utterly surprised, “you know 
those last two?” 

“I just came from there.” 

“What?’ 

“I had such a pleasant interview with them.” 

“And—they let you go, Miss Campbell?” 

“No; I just went. That’s why I am here— 
breakfasting with you.” 

“Tell me-” 

“I hardly know where to begin.” But she told 
him all that had happened to her, as well as most of 
her suspicions and deductions, finally taking the 
North China Gazette clipping from her purse. 
“Here is the thing I told you about,” she ended. 
“Can you make head or tail of it?” 

He took it, read it, then looked up. 

“You said something about d’Acosta’s saying it 
referred to your uncle’s death and came out in the 
North China Gazette. Is it quite clear?” 

“You call that clear?” said Marie. “What’s it 
all about?” 

“Well,” he rejoined, “I really know a great deal 
about Chinese lore. Let’s dissect this sentence by 
sentence. Now, the first two exclamations of the 
article: ‘Omniscient Gautama! Far-seeing, all-seeing 
Tathagata!’ Taken with what it says afterward, 
as well as with what actually happened, the man 
who caused this to be printed in the Gazette -” 

“My uncle?” 

“Yes. By this double exclamation he tried to 







“DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 83 

express two overlapping thoughts—one of death 
and the other materialistic. First, he appealed to 
the Buddha, the eternal deity. But using the word 
‘Gautama,’ he demonstrated that he was addressing 
the Buddha in his reincarnation of Lord of the 
Dead, thus showing that he himself did not expect 
to live much longer. On the other hand, by using 
the decidedly more worldly ‘Tathagata’ appellation 
of the same Lord Buddha, he endeavored to show 
that although in the shadow of death, he was still 
sufficiently interested in materialistic affairs to ap¬ 
peal to the living, not to all living things, but only 
to those who were ‘far-seeing, all-seeing,’ and by 
this he meant those who would see far enough to 
understand the thing which was all-important to 
him. Clear so far, is it?” 

“Oh, yes—after you play dragoman.” 

“ ‘How multiform the consolation of Thy 
Word!’ ” continued the Russian. “This, too, is 
couched in mystic, esoteric language of Chinese the¬ 
ology, so that it may only be deciphered by the ini¬ 
tiated. It means that the writer is not afraid of 
death or of what the future may bring—‘consola¬ 
tion,’ don’t you see? While, ‘How marvelous Thy 
Understanding’ refers again to the Buddha as well 
as being another reference to the living, those among 
the living to whom he is making this appeal, in the 
shadow of death—of murder, as he knew it would 
be, as it did turn out to be. And the last sentence 
contains the final appeal-” 

“To the Buddha?” 

“No, Miss Campbell; to one among the living— 
to you!” 

“How do you know?” cried the girl. 

“By one word in that last sentence: ‘Mara.’ It 
is the name of one of the feminine deities in the 
Buddhist heaven, comparable to Fate. But it is 



84 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

also—” He smiled. “Miss Campbell,” he went 
on, “doesn’t ‘Mara’ remind you of something?” 

“Why—” She considered; then suddenly. “You 
don’t mean, by any chance, my own name—Marie?” 

“Exactly! Marie—that’s what your father 
called you. But your mother’s name was Mara, 
and ‘Mara’ she called you. She died a few days 
after you were born, and your father left, a broken, 
sorrowful, embittered man. He had loved your 
mother much. Oh—it had been such a romantic 
meeting, such a sweeping love and passion! And 
all the obstacles he had to overcome! Your moth¬ 
er’s family and clan objecting—but, finally, your 
father won out. They were married. Then she 
died, and he took you back to America. Perhaps, 
with that superstitious Scotch mind of his, he was 
afraid of the name ‘Mara’—changed it to Marie.” 

“How do you happen to know all this?” 

“Part of my duty,” he replied. 

“Duty ?”—wonderingly. 

“Yes. Political duty. And your father never 
told you a word?” 

“He hardly ever mentioned my mother—the 
memory seemed to hurt him.” 

“Nor of China?” 

“Only when I left home, when I told him I was 
coming here. He asked me to take along the little 
Chinese vase. It seemed to him like a sort of talis¬ 
man.” 

“It is,” said the prince gravely. “A talisman of 
dominion—of ancient power and prophecy. Power 
—dominion—bitterly contested!” he added grimly, 
as again, from the outside, came the roar of the bat¬ 
teries at target-practice, a huge salvo belching up, 
stopping abruptly, then followed by another burst 
of sound waves like a giant beating a huge metal 
drum. 


“DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 85 

A moment later a giant, ruddy-complexioned Tar¬ 
tar came in. He was booted and spurred, dressed 
in a loose white tunic, the insignia of high military 
rank, embroidered over his heart in purple and sil¬ 
ver. The Russian introduced him to Marie. 

“Feofar Khan, the Tartar general.” He con¬ 
tinued in a whisper, “One of your uncle’s best 
friends and, by the way, a relative of yours.” 

“Oh!” Marie looked up, interested. 

“Very distantly. Both your mother’s family and 
his own claimed descent from Genghis Khan, the 
Central-Asian freebooter who once conquered 
China in a moment of enthusiasm. Not very popu¬ 
lar with the Chinese—these Tartar gentlemen.” 

“So the Chuen to yan told me.” 

The prince turned to Feofar Khan, who talked to 
him in rapid Mongol monosyllables, again bowed 
to Marie, saluted and withdrew. 

“Amiinterfering with your work?” asked the girl. 

The prince appeared to be a little nervous. But 
he shook his head. 

“No, no!” he said. “I’ve plenty of time— 
nearly half an hour. In the meantime—what we 
were talking about—why, it may, in fact, help me to 
—” He interrupted himself. “We were speaking 
about the Tchou-fou-yao vase, weren’t we?” 

“Yes. And my uncle’s last message.” She 
pointed to the clipping. “Tell me one thing: 
Surely my uncle must have realized that I would not 
be able to interpret this cryptic message of his— 
even if I did chance to run across it?” 

“As to your happening to run across it, tell me— 
when did you leave America?” 

“The middle of August.” 

“Your uncle died—was killed a few days after 
you left. After you left,” the prince repeated sig¬ 
nificantly. “He knew that you were coming here.” 


86 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


“How did he know?” 

“All these years he never lost track of you. You 
were his only blood kin, remember, the last de¬ 
scendant of his ancient clan. He knew you were 
coming to China, and assumed that you would see 
the papers as soon as you arrived. People pounce 
upon the papers after an ocean voyage. And the 
North China Gazette prints a special monthly edi¬ 
tion to meet travelers on landing. That’s where 
this clipping is from.” 

“I remember how the people grabbed those pa¬ 
pers up in Hongkong.” 

“You see, Miss Campbell? And as to your be¬ 
ing able to decipher the message, well, a dying man 
will clutch at a straw. Your uncle, the last few 
months of his life, was surrounded by enemies. Pie 
did not dare write. He did not dare express his 
final message in words which his enemies might 
understand. But everybody in China knew that he 
was one of the world’s leading authorities on Budd¬ 
histic legends and frequently made translations of 
them for English papers. And so, surrounded by 
enemies, nearly alone, helpless, desperate, knowing 
that death was near, knowing furthermore, that you 
were on your way to China, he clutched at a straw.” 

“Straw is right!” 

“Perhaps, of course, he also depended on his 
friends to help you decipher it. Miss Campbell, I 
was your uncle’s friend. I could not help him—he 
was way out there in Urga, in outer Mongolia— 
still, I was his friend-” 

“And—my friend?” she asked impulsively, hold¬ 
ing out her hand. 

He took it in both his, raised it to his lips and 
kissed it. 

“Yes,” lie said. “And I am very proud that you 
call me friend—very proud indeed!” 



“DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 87 

. He looked at her. A moment her gaze held 
his. Then she dropped her eyes;. She blushed 
slightly—hated herself for blushing—as she felt a 
strange, sweet tightening about her heart. She 
forced her voice to be dry and quite matter of fact 
as she asked the next question: 

“Tell me—how does it happen that everybody 
here—I mean d’Acosta, Sun Yu-Wen, Pailloux, the 
Cantonese authorities—is so well informed about 
me? Why—d’Acosta actually discovered that I 
liked the caviar they served aboard ship.” 

“I know he did.” The prince laughed. 

“Didn’t you send some to Mr. d’Acosta for the 
dinner he invited me to last night?” 

“Guilty, Miss Campbell.” 

“Don’t apologize. It was first-rate. Still— 
why do they all know about me?” 

“Won’t you get it through your charming little 
head that you are really a very important personage 
in China?” 

“Only in China?” 

“Also in the eyes of at least one Russian.” 

“Thank you, kind sir!” 

“You see, Miss Campbell, they are all playing for 
a gigantic stake here. So they employ spies, confi¬ 
dential correspondents. Take me, for example. I 
knew exactly when you left America—friend of mine 
over there cabled me-” 

“Who?” 

“A young American with whom I became very 
chummy a few years ago in London when he was 
assistant secretary of the American embassy. 
Clever chap—very brilliant member of your own 
intelligence service—quite in sympathy with our 
party here. Chap called Van Zandt.” 

“You don’t mean Tom Van Zandt?” 

“The same.” 



88 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


“Incredible! Footless, dear old Tom! Why, 
his main interest in life seemed to be the color of his 
spats, and his one claim to distinction a jade ciga¬ 
rette-holder ten inches long!” 

“A great Manchu duke gave him that cigarette- 
holder,” said the prince, “because he helped the 
duke out of some grave political trouble.” 

“Tom,” she repeated, shaking her head, “who 
couldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose!” 

“That’s one way of fooling the world,” explained 
the prince. “Van Zandt told me often that he con¬ 
sidered his spats and his tiny mustache and the va¬ 
cant stare in his eyes among his chief assets in the 
intelligence service. People, just naturally, think 
him a fool—and so they tell him things. You see” 
—he consulted his watch—“you came here well ad¬ 
vertised.” He rose and buckled on his sword. 

“Why did they all wait so long until they inter¬ 
viewed me about the Tchou-fou-yao vase?” 

“At first we were not sure if you had it.” 

“Who are ‘we’?” 

“D’Acosta, Su Yu-Wen and myself.” 

“The three of you are friends, then?” 

“Very great friends—in a way. We even work 
for the same object—the same general aim. But 
there are differences of opinion—perhaps of ideals. 
I have no time to explain now.” And, while he saw 
to the loading of a brace of cavalry pistols, he went 
on, “A few days after your arrival, we sent a confi¬ 
dential agent to your hotel, a woman, she took a 
position as maid-” 

“Liu Po-Yat, the Manchu?” 

“Exactly. She told us as soon as she found out 
that the vase was in your possession. Even then 
we were careful. For we were not sure if you 
were familiar with the trinket’s significance. Also, 
we wondered if the other party-” 




“DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 89 

“The Chuen to yan’s brotherhood-—” 

“Yes. We wondered if they had approached 
you, had perhaps come to terms with you—by— 
pardon me—bribery or perhaps threats or skilful 
diplomacy. Pailloux had an idea they had.” 

“That bearded Frenchman seems to be a traitor.” 

“Evidently. But things in Canton were coming 
to a head. We dared wait no longer. The three 
of us decided to risk it, to come to you, to ask you 
for your help and trust in spite of Pailloux’s advice 

“You did not come together?” 

“No. According to our old three-cornered agree¬ 
ment, given the—oh—difference in ideals, each pro¬ 
ceeded independently of the other-” 

“A Far-Eastern idea of the Three Musketeers, 
eh?” She laughed. “All for all—and each one 
for himself! And Mr. d’Acosta got there first. 
He chose his moment well. He knew that I owed 
a large hotel bill-” 

“Oh, yes.” Kokoshkine smiled. “He is a 
shrewd Levantine—-a clever financier.” He slipped 
the brace of pistols into his belt. 

“Why the murderous preparations?” asked Ma¬ 
rie Campbell. 

“Events are developing rapidly, gravely. A mo¬ 
ment ago, when Feofar Khan came in, he told me 
that the Chuen to yan and Judge Winchester have 
found out about how you fooled them. Listen!” 
He pointed through the window whence, suddenly, 
the artillery practice having ceased, there brushed 
in a great flourish of hoarse-throated trumpets— 
those three-yard-long, thin-snouted, straight-stem¬ 
med Chinese war-trumpets. He picked up his 
military field-glasses, adjusted them, peered through 
them, and gave them to the girl. “Over there,” he 
said. “On the other side of the river. Look!” 





9 o THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

And she beheld there, minute but distinct through 
the powerful lenses, a large body of soldiery. 

“There are other garrisons in this town,” said the 
prince, “besides the one which I command—those 
over there are Prince Tuan’s men, Mohammedan 
ruffians from Kansuh and the west.” She saw the 
bright cluster of banners round the squadron com¬ 
mander, saw the horses and their riders pushing 
through the clouds of dust which floated high above 
them. She noted the bright crimson of their tunics 
and the blackness of their turbans, saw more men 
run up, carbines in hand, swing themselves rapidly 
into high-peaked saddles and gallop away in differ¬ 
ent directions. 

“War?” demanded the girl. 

“No. At least—not yet. I told you—didn’t 
I?—that you are an important personage here. 
These troopers are being sent out to search the town 
for you, high and low. They will do their utmost. 
They must have the vase —and you. To-day, if 
possible. And there is little they will stop at. 
They may actually invade the foreign quarter, the 
Shameen, and then”—he shrugged his shoulders— 
“there will be trouble. That’s what Feofar Khan 
told me a while back. The Chuen to yan sent me 
orders to join them with a troop of horse.” 

“And—are you going to obey?” 

“But—you—a European—an imperialist, how 
can you?” 

A strange expression came into the gray eyes. 

“Miss Campbell,” came the enigmatic reply, “I 
have my own philosophy in life. And one of my 
maxims is that, even if you are the most devout 
Christian in the world, you cannot attempt to save 
your life by reciting the New Testament to the tiger 
who is about to pounce on you—nor that you can 


“DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 91] 

keep faith with the jackal, who could not keep faitfi 
with you. Never mind—I’ll explain it to you some 
other time”—he kissed her hand—“when we shall 
be even greater friends than we are to-day.” 

A Cossack, orderly entered, received an order in 
purring Russian and withdrew. Pavel Kokoshkine 
turned to the girl. 

“About the vase?” he asked. “It is in the hotel 
safe, you said?” 

“I left it there.” 

“And have I your permission to take it?” 

She pondered for a moment, remembering her 
father’s words, that she should not use the vase un¬ 
less she. absolutely had to. And again she felt the 
sweet tightening about her heart as she looked at 
the Russian and then, quite suddenly, with a sub¬ 
limely feminine lack of logic, she decided that the 
moment had come of which her father had spoken. 

“Yes,” she said. “Take the vase.” 

“But—you don’t know how I shall use it—what 
I am going to do with it?’ 

“Oh-” 

“You trust me, Miss Campbell?” 

“Yes.” 

“And—perhaps—you like me?” 

“Very much indeed.” 

“I am glad.” He tightened his belt-buckle. 
“You see”—he said it very simply—“I love you— 
you don’t mind my telling you?” 

She did not reply at once. She had felt that this 
was going to happen. Finally she looked up, and 
said: 

“I am so glad you love me.” 

“You—you mean—” His voice cracked. 

“Yes, dear,” she replied to his unfinished question, 
and she walked up to him, her face uptilted, her lips 
slightly open, and, as he still hesitated, she lifted her 



92 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

hands and buried them in his thick curly hair. She 
drew him down to her and kissed his lips. Then she 
blushed, receded rapidly, hid her embarrassment in 
flippant, frivolous words: 

“Don’t you ever dare tell me that I proposed to 
you!” 

A moment later the door opened and Feofar 
Khan came in. 

“Ready?” he asked. 

“Ready, General!” replied the prince. 

The Tartar bowed to the girl, then addressed his 
superior officer. 

“What about Miss Campbell?” he asked. 

“That’s what is bothering me,” said the other. 
“I’m afraid to leave her here, and of course I can’t 
take her along.” 

“I’m awfully sorry I am such a nuisance,” smiled 
Marie, and, after Kokoshkine had explained to her 
that he had decided to take with him only those 
troopers whom he could trust absolutely, leaving 
the garrison in the hands of his Chinese men, that, 
on the other hand, he could not leave her here with 
the same Chinese soldiers, radicals every one of 
them, who, given the Chuen to yan’s many spies, 
might discover her identity and whereabouts, she 
said quite calmly that the only thing for him to do 
was take her along. 

“Impossible!” cried the prince. 

“On the contrary—quite possible,” said Feofar 
Khan. He bowed to Marie. “Miss Campbell,” 
he said, “I am a much married man. I have taken 
nearly the full quota of four which the Koran per¬ 
mits the true believer. And yet—?” He smiled. 

“A proposal of marriage?” 

“Strictly temporary. Will you, for the time be¬ 
ing, join the number of my wives?” 

“Safety in numbers!” 


“DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 93 

“Even so,” objected the Russian, “the situation 
remains the same—the Chinese might suspect-” 

“Being Chinese, they will never guess at the sim¬ 
plicity of utter audacity,” said Feofar Khan. “On 
the other hand, being Asiatics, even these Southern 
radicals will draw the line at suspecting or search¬ 
ing the palanquin supposed to contain an inmate of 
my harem. Then in town, if we should have to, I 
have some Tartar friends who will take care of 
her.” 

Marie laughed. 

“I never imagined that there could be so many 
gorgeous thrills in the world,” she said. 

“My apartment is across the hall,” continued 
Feofar Khan. “I have with me some women ser¬ 
vants from my own country, entirely trustworthy. 
They knew and worshiped your uncle. Come—we 
have not much time to lose.” 

He took Marie to his apartment and gave rapid 
instructions to three ruddy-complexioned old Mon¬ 
gol women. They laughed and Salaamed. He 
left; and a few minutes later Marie returned, look¬ 
ing for all the world like a Tartar girl of the far- 
western plains—that hardy race born and bred on 
horseback—in a coat of heavily quilted silk that 
reached half-way to her knees, riding-boots, high- 
heeled and rowel-spurred, loose breeches of un¬ 
tanned leather, conical head-dress, and her face cov¬ 
ered by an orthodox Moslem horsehair veil! 

Meanwhile, in the outer courtyard, the Russian, 
Tartar and Manchu troopers and officers were as¬ 
sembling as a giant Circassian captain brought the 
army-whistle to his lips strapping on carbines and 
revolvers, others bringing out the horses, with a 
babel of cries in purring Slav and harsh Mongol. 

Not long afterward there was the rhythmic thud 
of a dromedary’s padded feet and, grumbling, spit- 



94 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

ting, protesting, the grotesque animal came into 
sight, a gaudy palanquin litter slung to the left of 
the great hairy hump, while the driver, Feofar 
Khan’s body-servant, was clinging precariously to 
the arrangement, half side-saddle and half chair. 
Came Marie, her eyes gleaming excitedly through 
the meshes of her veil, and escorted by Higginson, 
who, judging from his uniform, had by this time 
given up his seafaring vocation to take service in 
Prince Kokoshkine’s European contingent. 

Feofar Khan salaamed deeply before Marie. He 
lifted her up into the palanquin litter and closed the 
thin curtains of yellow silk, but not before he had 
improved the occasion by assuring her loudly in his 
native tongue, so that all the Mongol soldiers might 
understand, that she was the latest addition to his 
harem, his youngest and best beloved wife. 

Then there came a bugle-call and the cavalcade 
moved out of the courtyard with a jingle of spurs 
and sabers, Prince Kokoshkine riding on the left 
of the palanquin, Feofar Khan on the right, and so 
they rode down the hill and skirted the banks of the 
Pearl River, which they crossed farther down¬ 
stream with the help of half a dozen great flat ferry¬ 
boats. 

All the way across, as they entered Canton 
proper, as they rode through the native streets, they 
heard the bull-like roar of Chinese war-trumpets. 
Panic was licking the town with a tongue of flame. 
The crowds, hardly knowing why, were beginning to 
grow uneasy, nervous. They rode down the street 
of Excellent Purity past the Temple of the Mon¬ 
key and the Stork. On its threshold stood a gaunt 
priest, holding a tall pole with a red banner high 
in his hands. 

“Pao Ch’ing Mien Yang!” he shouted, with the 
full force of his lungs. “Death to the works of the 


“DEATH TO THE FOREIGNERS!” 95 


foreigners and honorable loyalty to China I” His 
voice throbbed with fanatic, horrible sincerity. 

“Pao CKing Mien Yang!” Here and there, in 
the throng of coolies and merchants, isolated voices 
took up the cry; and Prince Kokoshkine spurred his 
horse more closely against the dromedary’s heaving 
flanks. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE NARROW-FOOTED ONE 


T )10 Ch’ing Mien Yang!” cried the gaunt priest 
JY- of the Temple of the Monkey and the Stork. 

“Pao Ch’ing Mien Yang!” whispered an almond- 
eyed Cantonese servant in the Shameen, as he set 
his white master’s breakfast-table with minute care. 

“Kindly eschew political discussions—at break¬ 
fast, Wong,” said his master, who happened to pass 
through the dining room, and also happened to be 
Moses d’Acosta. “What is the trouble?” he asked. 

“No savvy,” came the reply in pidgin, with the 
stereotyped words of all Chinese when they do not 
wish to speak the truth, and, once more the gentle, 
patient servant, “Bleakfast leady.” 

D’Acosta smiled. 

“Eat it yourself,” he said. “I am going to take 
mine at the Grand Hotel.” And he left the house 
and turned down the street. 

He passed numbers of blue-bloused coolies on 
their way to work. They seemed strangely tense, 
talking among themselves with low humming like 
that of a thousand angry bees. 

Walking on, d’Acosta met Mademoiselle Droz, 
the exiled Parisian vaudeville actress, out on her 
morning constitutional. 

“You seem out of sorts, mon p’tit,” she said. 
“Any special reason?” 

“This is China—and we are white.” 

96 



“THE NARROW-FOOTED ONE” 97 

“Nothing new in that. We have always been 
white—and this has always been China.” 

“That’s just what I am kicking about.” 

“Did your Cantonese boy try to kill you?” 

“No. He is fond of me, and a decent lad.” 

“Then-” # 

“He is a Chinese. He may slit my throat to¬ 
morrow, in spite of all his liking for me.” 

“Why don’t you leave China if you don’t like it? 
You have plenty of money.” 

“Money? Bah!” He was quite sincere. 
“There are also my ideals.” 

“Au revoir!” 

He walked on to the hotel. There the atmo¬ 
sphere seemed surcharged with electricity. The 
Chinese waiters whispered uneasily among them¬ 
selves, and even the most supercilious, race-con¬ 
ceited European clerk at breakfast grew a little pale 
as he remembered tales he had heard from old- 
timers about the Boxer outbreak. 

When Moses d’Acosta entered the dining room, 
a dozen men rose and surrounded him. 

“What’s all the trouble? What is happening?” 

“Nothing is happening, gentlemen—except your 
own cowardice. Cowardice made the Boxer trouble 
possible.” And he walked away, sat down, swal¬ 
lowed a cup of black coffee and asked the Chinese 
head waiter to send for Pailloux. 

“He has not been home all night.” 

“Oh?” D’Acosta was surprised. “All right— 
I’ll talk to the assistant manager.” The latter con¬ 
firmed the information, adding that Pailloux and 
De Smett, the house detective, had left the hotel 
shortly after dinner the night before, taking Miss 
Campbell with them. 

“Are you sure ?” 

“Positive. I helped her into the carriage.” 



98 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

“Where did they go ? Any idea ?” 

“No—except that they drove into the native 
town.” 

“Hm.” The Levantine shook his head. “I am 
going up to my apartment.” He kept a suite at the 
hotel. “Kindly send or telephone to Mandarin 
Sun Yu-Wen and ask him to join me immediately.” 

“Very well, sir.” 

Moses d’Acosta went to his rooms. He must 
have furnished them in a moment of homesickness 
for his native Constantinople, his native Levant. 
For there was nothing here to remind one that this 
was China. It seemed rather an epitome of the 
Moslem Near East. 

There was peace here, and it enveloped him al¬ 
most physically. With a little sigh of satisfaction 
he sat down cross-legged on a huge pillow and lit a 
water-pipe blazing with emeralds and hard Jeypore 
enamel. But when, not long afterward, a servant 
announced Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen, d’Acosta be¬ 
came immediately the perfect Mongol host. For 
he knew the other well; they were friends in spite of 
their differing ideals and philosophies, and he knew 
how the old Manchu appreciated being shown the 
slightly stilted etiquette of his own race by a for¬ 
eigner. 

The mandarin seemed nervous, uneasy; but he, 
too, adhered strictly to the rules of conduct as writ¬ 
ten in the “Book of Ceremonies and Exterior Dem¬ 
onstrations.” 

Both men bowed deeply. 

“Please deign to enter,” said d’Acosta. 

“How should I, the very little and insignificant 
one, deign to enter, O brother very wise and very 
old?” came the correct self-deprecatory reply. 

Three times the invitation was repeated, to be 
met three times by the same answer, and finally, pro- 


“THE NARROW-FOOTED ONE” 99 

fusely apologizing, the mandarin entered, closed the 
door, and bowed again, sucking in his breath. 

“Walk very slowly,” said the Levantine. 

“No, no;” countered the mandarin, to show his 
humbleness and unimportance. “I shall walk very 
quickly, O brother very wise and very old!” 

# The other extended an arm and indicated the 
pillows. 

“Please deign to choose a place for vour honor¬ 
able body,” he said. “Take the west side—the side 
of august honor.” 

“Every place is too flattering for me, the very 
small and insignificant one.” 

“Won’t you deign to drink?” continued the Lev¬ 
antine, after both had sat down. 

“Thank you. I shall drink, if at all, from a 
plain wooden cup with no ornaments.” 

“No, no!” exclaimed the other. “You shall 
drink from a precious cup of transparent green jade 
with three orange tassels.” He clapped his hands; 
the servant entered, brought tea and sweets and cig¬ 
arettes, and it was then that the two strangely mated 
friends spoke of what was on their minds. 

“You have heard about Miss Campbell?” asked 
d’Acosta. 

“Yes,” replied the Manchu, with all the bland 
peacefulness of the Buddha who sees the world 
crumbling into dust but shows no trace of emotion. 

“What do you think will happen, Sun Yu-Wen?” 

“That is on the Buddha’s knees. Ahee!” The 
Manchu sighed. 

The other made an impatient gesture. 

“Suppose—if you will pardon me saying so—we 
hustle the Buddha a little and give him a push in the 
right direction.” 

The mandarin, frankly Mongol, and therefore 
frankly irreligious, was nowise shocked. 



100 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


“Can we?” he smiled. 

“At least we can try.” 

“How, my friend? You don’t know, eh? Nor 
do I.” 

“But—to give up-” 

“What else is there to do? Listen!” He 
pointed at the window. “The trumpets are roar¬ 
ing. By this time the Chue'n to yan!s jackals are all 
over town. And then?” He folded his hands 
calmly across his obese body. “We be important 
men, you and I. These many years we have been 
almost sacrosanct. But even the fleetest horse can¬ 
not escape its own tail. My friend,” he added, 
“perhaps my spirit, released from his fleshly envel¬ 
ope, will soon jump the Dragon Gate and kowtow 
deeply before the spirits of my honorable ances¬ 
tors.” 

“You seem to relish the prospect,” came the heat¬ 
ed rejoinder. “I don’t. And, as for Miss Camp¬ 
bell, and, also, the vase-” 

“She hid the vase,” interrupted the mandarin. 

“How do you know?” 

“Simple deduction. Last night she was a pris¬ 
oner. If she had had the vase on her person, they 
would have found it.” 

“Flow do you know they did not find it? That 
is just what I believe and what I am afraid of. It 
is the possession of this vase which is making the 
Chuen to yan’s brotherhood and all this riffraff of 
Southern radicals so dangerous, which is causing all 
the trouble.” 

“No! If they had found the vase on Miss Camp¬ 
bell, they would not mind her having escaped.” 

“Oh—escaped, has she?” D’Acosta was aston¬ 
ished as well as relieved. 

“Yes.” 

“Sure of it, Sun Yu-Wen?” 




“THE NARROW-FOOTED ONE” ioi 

“Absolutely. My spies told me. Therefore, I 
repeat, since she did not have the vase, she has hid 
it, and that is why all these Southern jackals are 
nosing the ground. And they will find it. They 
will search everywhere. The little jackals will lick 
blood, will like the taste of it. It will mean death— 
for many—in Canton, death—for all—in the Sha- 
meen!” 

“Logical enough. There remains one hope— 
one man—Prince Kokoshkine.” 

“He left the barracks early this morning,” said 
the Manchu, “on the Chuen to yan’s orders—my 
spies brought me word.” 

“He—he obeyed the orders?” 

“What else could he have done? He cannot 
fight all Canton.” 

“Did he take all his cavalry with him?” 

“No. Only his Russians, Tartars and Man- 
chus. I have not yet heard from all my spies. I 
left instructions at my house to bring me word here. 
They will doubtless report by and by. We will 
wait—there is nothing else for us to do.” He 
sipped his tea, then looked up, very grave. “D’A- 
costa,” he went on, “we have been friends—we 
three—you and I and Pavel Kokoshkine. We—all 
three—have worked for the same aim, the peace of 
Asia, which means, perhaps, the peace of the world. 
Our methods have differed. For we belong to 
three different races, Slav, Jew and Mongol. You 
have believed in building with the power of money, 
of finance, of big business, to make China so inde¬ 
pendent out of her own resources that she can resist 
the world economically—and thus command re¬ 
spect. I cling to the philosophy of my ancestors 
and also, being not altogether a fool, to certain 
more constructive maxims. I believe in the power 
of diplomacy, the wonderful diplomacy of the old 


102 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


monarchy, the Manchu regime, which found its pin¬ 
nacle and its pride in the late dowager empress. 
Thus it has been my idea always to bring back the 
monarchy and, with it, peace. And Kokoshkine, 
the soldier, believes that peace can only come 
through war or the threat of war. That is why he 
has taken service under the Cantonese government, 
to lead them, to become all-powerful, to undermine 
with their own troops the influence of the Chuen to 
yan’s brotherhood, then to strike when the moment 
was ripe. We failed—you and I and the Russian. 
All our three methods”—he smiled very gently— 
“have proved useless, barren. Finance, diplomacy, 
force—useless—all three, all three!” He sighed. 
“We differed, when really even to differ was only a 
waste of time.” 

“And yet,” rejoined the Levantine, “we three 
agreed on one thing—the power of superstitions and 
ancient traditions. The greatest power here in 
China!” 

“Yes,” admitted the other; “the power contained 
in that vase. And there, too, we have failed. If 
the vase be lost, then lost is its power to us. And 
if it falls into the hands of the Chuen to yan y s 
brotherhood—My friend, I have already instruct¬ 
ed my relatives in Peking to bury my body in a 
charming spot, on the side of a hill, with an ex¬ 
quisite view over the fields, so that my spirit after 
death may thoroughly enjoy itself. There is no 
hope, for you, for me, for Pavel Kokoshkine. If 
the latter turns against his Cantonese master, then 
the odds are too high—they will crush him. If he 
does not turn against them, then presently the 
Chuen to yan will kill him as one too powerful, too 
influential, as soon as he has sucked him dry of 
military knowledge and tactics. It is over. The 
book has been read. The grape has been pressed.” 


THE NARROW-FOOTED ONE” 103 

He drew an opium pipe from his loose sleeve, rose, 
and took the smoking paraphernalia from a small 
lacquered table in the corner of the room. “Have 
I your permission to take a few whiffs of the black 
smoke—to make the end more sweet?” he asked; 
and, when the other inclined his head, “Thank you, 
old friend!” 

Delicately he kneaded the brown poppy cube 
against the tiny bowl of his pipe, then dropped it 
into the open furnace of the lamp and watched the 
flame change it gradually into amber and gold. The 
opium boiled, sizzled, evaporated. The fragment 
smoke rolled in sluggish clouds over the floor, and 
Sun Yu-Wen, having emptied the pipe at one long- 
drawn inhalation, leaned back, both shoulders 
pressed well down on the pillow, so as better to in¬ 
flate his chest and keep his lungs filled all the longer 
with the fumes of the drug. 

A slow smile overspread his placid butter-yellow 
features. He stared at the rolling opium clouds. 
The noises of the outer world, the tumult and the 
riot, the crackling of steel and hate, the roaring of 
the Chinese war-trumpets seemed very far away; 
and he was already floating on the fantastic, gro¬ 
tesque wings of poppy-dreams when the Levantine 
shook him by the shoulder. He sat up, rubbed his 
eyes. 

“Yes?” he asked dreamily. 

“Tugluk Khan is here.” 

Immediately the mandarin became fully con¬ 
scious, pushed his opium-pipe away with a regretful 
gesture, and smiled at Tugluk Khan, his chief spy, a 
Moslem Tartar from Chinese Turkestan, dressed 
in the orthodox blue of a Cantonese coolie, who 
stood before him with clasped hands. 

“What news?” he demanded. 

“I passed Prince Kokoshkine’s troop of riders 


io 4 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

below the corner of the Loo Man-Tze Street,” re¬ 
plied the other. “Feofar Khan was with him.” 

“They saw you?” 

“I was in a crowd of coolies. I did not dare 
speak. But I touched the bridle of his horse, ask¬ 
ing for alms as if I were a beggar, and as he bent 
down to curse me, I whistled two shrill notes, as do 
the long-limbed rice-birds of our own west country. 
Allah grant he heard and understood!” 

“He did not speak?” 

“Wait, master! For there is one strange thing 
of which I must tell you. Feofar Khan has his 
youngest wife with him.” 

“Youngest wife?” cut in the mandarin. “Ridicu¬ 
lous! I know that Tartar reprobate. He loves 
soft hands and melting eyes. But he has three 
wives already, each as old and shriveled as the devil 
himself, and each hen-pecking our brave general 
with the strength of her tongue. They are jealous 
of each other. But against a fourth wife they 
would make common cause. He would not dare 
marry again. Besides, I saw him only two days 
ago. He was not married to a young wife then. 
And a Tartar wedding takes seven days to cele¬ 
brate.” 

“But I heard, master!” 

“What?” 

“What he said to her. She was in a palanquin 
slung to the flank of a dromedary, with Feofar 
Khan riding on one side, Prince Kokoshkine on the 
other. And, after I whistled the call of the rice- 
bird, Feofar Khan rose in his stirrups and spoke to 
his young wife, through the curtains.” 

“What did he say?” 

“He called her ‘Blood of my Liver’ and ‘Pink- 
breasted Pearl,’ and-” 

“What else did he say?” 



“THE NARROW-FOOTED ONE” 105 

“He begged her—the narrow-footed one——” 

“Wait!” interrupted the mandarin. “Tell me 
—aren’t you Tartars proud of your women’s short, 
broad feet?” 

“Yes. But Feofar Khan did call her narrow¬ 
footed! He begged her pardon for exposing her 
to the rough tumult of the streets, and added that 
soon she would be at rest in more fitting surround¬ 
ings, in the house of his second cousin, Hunyagu 
Khan.” 

Sun Yu-Wen looked up, startled. 

“At rest—in the house of Hunyagu Khan—did he 
say that?” he demanded. 

“Yes, master.” 

“ ‘Trust the snake before the devil, and the devil 
before the Tartar.’ ” He quoted the ancient pro¬ 
verb. “Good, good, my Tugluk Khan!” He tossed 
the latter a purse filled with gold coins. “You have 
done well. Rest yourself.” 

He dismissed his spy and turned to Moses d’A- 
costa, every bit of lethargy gone from his placid 
face. 

“My friend,” he said, “it appears that I was 
wrong, after all, about my spirit jumping the Dra¬ 
gon Gate. For the end is not yet!” He started 
toward the door. “Come!” 

“Where to?” asked the Levantine. 

“To the house of Hunyagu Khan!” 

“But,” came the objection, “I am not worse than 
the average coward. Still, for the two of us, 
marked men both, to go beyond the Shameen—with 
the Chuen to yart’s jackals roving everywhere-” 

Again the mandarin laughed. 

“You own this hotel. Ever consider its loca¬ 
tion?” 

“I have. And right now I don’t care for it. It 
is too near the outer wall which divides the Sha- 




JO6 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

meen from the native town, in the direct danger- 
zone.” 

“For which praises be to the Lord Buddha!” 
said the Manchu. “You see—Hunyagu Khan’s 
house is at the very edge of the native town, just on 
the other side of the outer wall which surrounds the 
Shameen. His back courtyard runs parallel with 
yours. You understand?” 

“I do—now!” exclaimed d’Acosta. “Seems to 
me that Feofar Khan sent a message after all.” 

“He did, indeed. He asked us to meet him, or if 
not him, then his youngest wife—the narrow-footed 
one—in Hunyagu Khan’s house. Narrow-footed 
—a white woman, don’t you think?” 

“Miss Campbell?” 

“Right you are 1 ” 


CHAPTER IX 

journey's end 

T HE two strange friends left the hotel and 
stepped into the back courtyard, a small en¬ 
closed place, above it the back of the hotel rising 
and presenting a windowless expanse of white¬ 
washed bricks. The only opening was a narrow 
door, behind a screening cluster of bushes, which led 
into the kitchen. But, from snatches of talk that 
drifted up from there, they knew the cook and his 
assistants were just then fully occupied. 

D’Acosta looked round warily. 

“All right,” he said. “Here’s for Hunyagu 
Khan’s house!” 

The Shameen wall was perhaps ten feet high and 
crowned with a stone coping, but a couple of feet 
from the ground there was a narrow ledge from 
which they could reach the top. The Levantine, 
thin and lithe, swung himself up first, then lent a 
helping hand to the Manchu, whose girth was not 
meant for violent exercises. For a moment they 
balanced on the wall, then let themselves drop on 
the other side. They got up, crossed the courtyard, 
and knocked at the back door of Hunyagu Khan’s 
house, who, true to his clannish breed, employed 
only Tartar servants. They entered, and shortly 
afterward Hunyagu Khan came from an inner 
apartment. 

He kowtowed before his guests and gave them a 
hearty welcome. 


io8 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


“Yes,” he said, after they had told him why they 
had come; “you are doubtless right. Wait here. 
My servants are close-mouthed and trustworthy. 
My house is yours, and so is my feeble strength. 
No, no; do not thank me! Iam but the lowly dust 
beneath your charming and exquisite feet.” 

He clapped his hands. A servant entered, re¬ 
ceived his orders, and returned with steaming cups 
of tea and cigarettes. They sat down. And, while 
outside the great yellow city was coiling like a snake 
about to strike, while the war-trumpets roared 
louder and louder, while Moses d’Acosta looked on, 
wondering, slightly impatient, the two Mongols 
talked gently and lengthily of other, unworldly mat¬ 
ters, with the dignity of men at whose back three 
thousand years of unbroken racial history and pride 
were sitting in a solemn, graven row. 

“Yes, yes,” said Sun Yu-Wen in answer to one of 
Hunyagu Khan’s remarks; “it is mentioned already 
in that delicate tome called ‘Ku-Luang’s Commen¬ 
tary’ that-” 

The voice droned on, and Moses d’Acosta was 
falling into uneasy sleep when he was suddenly wak¬ 
ened by a great tumult outside, a neighing of horses, 
a jingling of head-stalls, a crackling of steel, a 
thumping of kettle-drums, and curses, shrieks, cries 
—and, dear above the mad symphony, a rough 
voice shouting a hectic torrent of words, a crazy 
mixture of terms of endearment and full-flavored 
Oriental abuse. 

“Feofar Khan!” said Hunyagu Khan. “I know 
his voice—and his choice of language.” 

“Little pink-and-blue sweetmeat! Little melon 
seed of much delight!” shouted Feofar Khan above 
the din of steel and jingling bridle. “Oh, narrow¬ 
footed one!” 

Moses d’Acosta inclined his head. 



JOURNEY’S END 109 

“Yes,” he said; “Feofar Khan is continuing the 
telling of the message,” while outside the latter went 
on, bewailing the sending of cruel, stony fate which 
had forced her, his youngest wife, for love of him to 
leave the “fat and warm security of the harem,” to 
launch herself upon the bitter, bitter waters of ad¬ 
venture and fatigue and extremely bad roads. 

“Ahee!” shrieked the Tartar general. “And to 
have swine-fed Kansuh ruffians, to have the very 
sweepings of the Canton gutters crack low jokes at 
me and my beloved narrow-footed one to the detri¬ 
ment of my nose!” 

“Listen,” said another voice. 

“I shall not listen! All I could I have suffered, 
like the gentle, patient man I am! But to have you 
—the great chief whom loyally I served—to have 
you doubt me!”—and a sound very much like weep¬ 
ing. 

“But what do you want?” asked the other voice. 

“I want a safe asylum for my youngest wife, here 
in the house of my kinsman. Permit me to take 
her into the house, to introduce her to my cousin, to 
beg him for hospitality-” 

“I told you that we are in a hurry, that-” 

“Yes, great master; you told me—at least, you 
gave me to understand—that you do not entirely 
trust me—and it is that which hurts most. And all 
because of that great and most evil grandson of a 
cockroach, Sun Yu-Wen, and that unbeautiful and 
illegitimate descendant of many piglings, Moses 
d’Acosta-” 

The other voice cut in again, sharp, high: 

“Feofar Khan, I do not mistrust you. Nor is it 
my intention to interfere in your domestic affairs. 
It was foolish of you to bring your wife along-” 

“I love her, O great chief!” 

“Foolish just the same. All right. She has my 






no THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


permission to go into Hunyagu Khan’s house. No” 
—quickly—“she can go alone and explain matters 
to your cousin.* You will stay here with me as will 
Prince Kokoshkine. I need you two.” 

“Who is that speaking?” asked the Levantine, 
and a servant whom Hunyagu Khan had dispatched 
through a side door came in and replied that it was 
the Chuert to yan. 

“The Chuen to yan’s soldiers are knocking at the 
gate,” he reported. “They have a woman with 
them.” 

“Heavens!” exclaimed d’Acosta. “This is the 
front room—they’ll find us here-” 

“Where?” asked the mandarin. 

Hunyagu Khan laughed. 

“I am a Moslem,” he said, “and, I trust, ortho¬ 
dox. There is always safety and privacy in an 
orthodox Moslem’s house—if he be broad-minded 
enough to forget at times his orthodoxy. Follow 
me.” 

They crossed the room at a rush, another, and yet 
another, while in the distance they heard the outer 
gate open, heard the rough accents of Cantonese 
soldiers, and, finally, at the end of a hall, their host 
pulled apart a gaily flowered curtain. 

“My harem,” he said. “Come! Let’s forget 
for the time Moslem prejudice and etiquette!” 

b They entered quickly, amid great laughing and 
giggling and chattering ahd clanking of jewels and 
rustling of loose silk trousers, as their host’s wives 
and daughters and female slaves rushed about, star¬ 
ing for a moment wide-eyed at the male visitors, 
then rapjdly adjusting their face-veils and fleeing 
precipitately into a back apartment. Hunyagu 
Kdian left, to return a few moments later, ushering 
in a veiled woman, clad in the height of fashion of 
the Mongolian plains. 



JOURNEY’S END Hi 

“The narrow-footed one!” he introduced and 
laughed, while the newcomer took off her face-veil, 
showing the smiling face of Marie Campbell! 

“Hello, everybody!” she said, and to the Levan¬ 
tine : “I always did pity Oriental women—to-day 
more than ever. My word—these veils are stifling, 
and hardly hygienic, I should judge!” She sat down 
on a divan. 

“Your nerves seem to be still in working order,” 
commented d’Acosta. 

“Have to be! I am a remittance-woman, am I 
not? And your hotel—why—the prices you charge 
—if your guests didn’t have iron nerves, they’d die 
of heart-failure when they see their bills! Which 
reminds me. Last night I rushed off suddenly from 
dinner. I owe you and Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen an 
apology. But when you mentioned that Tchou- 
fou-yao vase again—I couldn’t stand it any longer.” 

“Yes,” smiled the Manchu; “and it seems that 
you ran into a great deal of trouble, Miss Camp¬ 
bell.” He sighed. “What did I tell you last 
night ? Oh, yes—I told you, that it is strange in¬ 
deed how the fate of the many millions depends al¬ 
ways from a woman’s jeweled earrings. . Miss 
Campbell,” he added, “have I your permission to 
speak once more about the little Tchou-fou-yao 
vase?” 

“Go ahead,” laughed the girl. 

“You have it?” 

“I hid it.” 

“Will you give it to us?” 

“Us?” she echoed. “Last night there seemed to 
be a difference of opinion between you and Mr. 
d’Acosta.” 

“Last night the danger was not as imminent as it 
is to-day.” And he explained to her how he, Moses 
d’Acosta and Prince Kokoshkine were friends, each 


112 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


working for the same aim, the peace of the world 
through China’s peace, how they had differed on 
the question of method, but how all three knew that 
superstition was the greatest power in China. “Su¬ 
perstition and tradition!” he wound up. “In this 
land of ancient superstitions, ancient traditions! 
Contained in two little vases-” 

“One of which my uncle broke to pieces. Oh, 
yes—Pavel told me-” 

“Pavel?” 

She blushed slightly. 

“Prince Kokoshkine, I mean. You can tell me 
more about the vase later on. In a hurry to get it, 
aren’t you?” 

/‘Yes, Miss Campbell.” . 

“Very well. The vase is in the hotel.” 

“Impossible!” exclaimed the Levantine. “I had 
the hotel searched—even your rooms.” 

“Nice, honest host you are, aren’t you? I shall 
complain about you to the Hotel Men’s Association 
as soon as I get back to New York. But there is 
one place you forgot to search.” 

“Namely?” 

“The little safe in Pailloux’s private office. I 
slipped it in there on the second shelf, way back 
amid a lot of old papers. I did it on a woman’s 
instinct-” 

“Blessed be woman’s instinct!” said the Levan¬ 
tine. “It’s a much more powerful weapon than 
man’s logic.” He was out of the room, and a mo¬ 
ment later, looking from the window, they saw him 
cross the back courtyard and swing himself across 
the Shameen wall into the hotel grounds. 

While they waited for his return, the mandarin 
told her about the power and influence of the little 
vase—and a queer tale it was, reaching into the 
dawn of legendary antiquity, stretching on, through 





JOURNEY’S END 113 

the gray, swinging centuries, into the present era. 
For it appeared that, hundreds of years earlier, at 
the time when Chi Huang-Ti, the ruler of the Chi¬ 
nese feudatory states which laid the foundation of 
the Celestial Empire, began to build the Great Wall 
of China and to fortify old Peking as the only means 
of stopping the marauding Mongol horsemen, a 
sainted priest was given two tiny vases by a wander¬ 
ing monk—the Buddha himself, the legends told— 
with the injunction to guard them well. For who¬ 
ever possessed these vases, Chinese or foreigner, 
would by the strength of them have dominion over 
China. The stranger—monk or living Buddha— 
had pointed out on the inner surface of the vases a 
miniature painting of China’s ancient divinities. 
They were all there, very tiny, but all-powerful; 
and, since the Chinese are intensely practical, the 
sainted priest had been given two vases, in case one 
should be broken or lost. The vases, the double 
emblem of dominion, had gone from century to 
century, from hand to hand, from dynasty to 
dynasty. 

When Genghis Khan, the great Mongol conquer¬ 
or, had come out of the bleak Hsing-an Mountains 
to subjugate China, he had taken the vases, had 
paid homage to them, and after him his grandson, 
Kublai Khan, all the cruel Mongols of the Yuan 
dynasty, the Mings, and the Manchus. The Man- 
chus, too, had passed, and it was many years before 
her death that the dowager empress, obeying a 
dream, had sent the vases to the far west, to the 
Su Yueh, the chief of the Four Mountains for 
safekeeping. Had come the revolutions, the re¬ 
public—“and,” Sun Yu-Wen wound up, “you know 
the rest.” 

“Is this little emblem really so powerful?” 

“Absolutely! No Chinese, not even the most 


11 4 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

modern, the Westernized and scoffing and atheistic, 
would dare disobey its hidden command.” 

“And—I suppose,” asked the girl, “no Chinaman 
would dare risk its destruction, now that my uncle 
has destroyed the duplicate and only one is left.” 

“You are right, Miss Campbell.” 

Then, when she was silent, her face cupped in her 
hands, evidently deep in thought, he asked gently: 

“What are you thinking of?” 

“Of Pavel Kokoshkine. Out there”—she point¬ 
ed to the window, whence came, louder and louder, 
the riot and tumult of the crowds, the loud braying 
of trumpets—“riding through the streets by the side 
of the Chuen to yan, helpless-” 

“Force was his belief. Steel and bullets. They 
failed him.” 

“As diplomacy failed you—and finance failed Mr. 
d’Acosta, and”—she slurred, then smiled—“I won¬ 
der if you were perhaps right about—how did you 
put it? Something about all the world dangling 
from a woman’s jeweled earrings, wasn’t it?” 

“Doubtless I was right,” said the Manchu. 

“I am beginning to agree with you. And do you 
know why?” 

“No.” 

“Because at times there is an idea-” 

“In the jeweled earrings, Miss Campbell?” 

“No. In the feminine brains behind the jeweled 
earrings. You’ll forgive me—won’t you?—if I 
pat myself on the back.” 

She laughed, but when, a few moments later, 
Moses d’Acosta returned and gave her the little 
vase, she grew serious. Dominion—she thought, 
as her fingers touched the cool bit of porcelain— 
dominion and power in this small piece of glazed 
clay! $She looked at it, wondered. What had 
caused her mother to give the tiny thing to her 




JOURNEY’S END 115 

father^ on her death-bed, as she must have done? 
A spirit of prophecy? She shrugged her shoulders. 
However, it had happened. She rose, and put on 
her thick horsehair face-veil. 

“I am going,” she said. 

“You are—what?” The two men’s astonished 
voices came simultaneously. 

“Going.” 

“Where?” 

“To the Temple of Horrors.” And she cut 
through their excited buzz of expostulations with: 
“Send some of Hunyagu Khan’s servants with me 
—Buddhists. I don’t suppose all his people are 
Moslems. While I am gone, communicate with 
the Chuen to yan —can you?” 

“Yes,” said the Manchu. “One of my spies is 
quite near. But-” 

“Tell the Chuen to yan I have the vase. Then 
bring him with you to the Temple of Horrors. 
And—Pavel Kokoshkine—don’t forget to bring 
him, too, whatever else you do.” 

“But what do you expect to do?” demanded 
Moses d’Acosta. 

“Are you a poker player?” 

“Yes.” 

“Very well. I am going to draw four cards— 
with the hope that I’ll accumulate a royal flush.” 

Not many minutes afterward, accompanied by 
half a dozen of Hunyagu Khan’s stalwart Tartars, 
who had received orders to obey her implicitly, she 
was out on the Canton streets, and to her dying day 
she never forgot the next quarter of an hour—the 
tumult, the riot, the crowds of excited coolies, the 
Chuen to yan } s jackals scurrying everywhere, like 
scorpions, searchings searching—for her. She nev¬ 
er forgot the ever-rising shouts of “Pao Ch’ing 
Mien Yang ,} —“Death to the foreigners,” the in- 



ii 6 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


sane fervor of the throngs, the incredible, trembling 
elation of hate. 

What was it all about? The crowds did not care, 
did not know. But it swept over them like a ty¬ 
phoon, and steadily they seemed to crystallize their 
one purpose—the Shameen—the hated foreigners 
there! And the mob gathered strength and vol¬ 
ume, rolled on relentlessly, and it took all the phy¬ 
sical force and all the diplomacy of the Chuen to 
yan’s picked agents to keep them from their pur¬ 
pose. “Not yet!” the Chuen to yan had ordered. 
“We will not fight the foreigner—not unless we 
have to. Search! Find! You must find!” 

Marie was grateful to her retinue of Tartars. 
They cut through the throng as a knife cuts through 
cheese, shouting insults and defying words at every¬ 
body, and belaboring with a beautiful impartiality 
the backs and thighs and heads of merchants and 
peasants alike. 

“Oh, thy right!” they yelled, as they brought 
down their long, brass-tipped staves. “Oh, thy 
left! Oh, thy face!” suiting the swing of their 
sticks to the part of Chinese anatomy which they 
were striking. “Give way, unmentionable ones! 
This is a great lady on her way to sacrifice to the 
spirits of her honorable ancestors!” 

Pushing, fighting, striking, Marie in the middle, 
they pressed on, and finally gained the Temple of 
Horrors. There the crowd was a little less dense. 
The door was open. Marie looked. She saw in¬ 
side, wreathed in incense smoke, the dread statues 
of horror, and, at the farther end, the one repre¬ 
sentation of sweetness and gentleness, a great sta¬ 
tue of the Goddess of Mercy. There were a num¬ 
ber of yellow-robed priests in the temple, but they 
gave way when the Tartars told them that this was 
the wife of a great Mongol chief come to pray. 


JOURNEY’S END 117 

So, preceded by her escort, Marie entered the 
temple. She crossed its full length until she came 
to the statue of the Goddess of Mercy. It stood on 
a gilt lotus pedestal above a long sweep of steps. 
Upon these she knelt and prayed, prayed fervently 
to the God of her childhood, prayed and waited, 
minute after minute, the tiny vase clutched tightly in 
her hand. 

Presently, as if from a great distance, she heard 
voices and footsteps. She turned, saw the Chuen 
to yan enter the temple, accompanied by a number 
of high priests, and behind them, driven on by sol¬ 
diers’ musket-butts, Sun Yu-Wen, Moses d’Acosta 
and Prince Pavel Kokoshkine, their hands tied be¬ 
hind their backs. She waited until they had crossed 
half the length of the temple. Then she rose and 
called out in a loud, clear voice: 

“Here! I am here!” 

And suddenly she rushed up the steps that led to 
the statue of the Goddess of Mercy, stood there, the 
vase in her hand; and while the priests rushed about 
like angry bees, crying excitedly: “A sacrilege! 
A sacrilege!” her own voice came ringing, high and 
strong. 

“I am speaking to the Chuen to yan, the chief of 
the Society of Augustly Harmonious Fists!” 

The Chuen to yan stepped forward and looked at 
her. For a moment there came again that blight¬ 
ing fear she had felt when she had looked upon 
those features for the first time. But she controlled 
herself immediately. She was playing for a great 
stake, she told herself, and she held the winning 
hand. She was sure of it. 

Still he gazed up at her. 

“Ah!” he breathed, just the one word, mock¬ 
ingly. 

“I am here.” 


if18 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 

4 ‘So I notice.” 

“And”—she opened her hand, showed a rapid 
glimpse of the tiny vase—“I have the vase, the 
Tchou-fou-yao vase—the ancient emblem of do¬ 
minion and power!” When the priests heard the 
word “Tchou-fou-yao,” something like a shiver ran 
over them and they kowtowed deeply. “I give you 
the choice,” she went on. 

“What choice?” 

“Either I put the vase here, at the feet of the 
Goddess of Mercy, so that it may remain here for 
all time to come, as an emblem of China’s greatness, 
greatness in the past, greatness again in the future 
—that it may remain here forever, made sacred by 
the protection of this goddess.” Her words came 
sweeping, with an intense sincerity of which she had 
not thought herself capable. “If I do that, then I 
want your word, your sacred word of honor by 
whatever you hold holy, that you will make peace 

“Peace with whom?” the Chuen to yan demand¬ 
ed, a strange, eery look coming into his eyes. 

“Peace with all the world! No longer the war 
of intrigues, of gliding words and lies! But peace, 
chiefly and foremost, with these three men”—she 
pointed to d’Acosta, Sun Yu-Wen and Kokoshkine 
—“who work for China, even as you are working. 
Peace—through compromise ! But if you do not 
do as I tell you, I shall drop the vase. I shall 
smash it into a dozen pieces, as my uncle smashed 
the vase he had.” 

“You would not dare!” j 

“I would! And you know I would! And then 
lost for all time the hope of dominion and peace and 
power! Yes! I would dare—and you know I 
would!” 

There was a moment’s complete silence; then, 



JOURNEY’S END 119 

from the throng of priests, who had caught the 
meaning of the words, a cry went up—not a hun¬ 
dred cries, massed and blended into one, but just 
one cry, such as one would imagine to follow the 
death of the last hope, the last faith, the last prom¬ 
ise from the face of the earth. And suddenly the 
Chuen to yan inclined his head. 

“You win,” he said very calmly. 

For he was a Chinese, an Oriental. A fanatic? 
Yes. But also a fatalist. Fight the inevitable? 
And what price was there in that, what pride, what 
logic and worth? 

He turned to the soldiers, gave curt orders, and 
a moment later the bonds of the three prisoners 
were cut. 

It was the Manchu who spoke first. 

“Chuen to yan,” he said, holding out his hand, 
“let us forget what has passed. Let us work to¬ 
gether—in the future—the four of us! Was it not 
Confucius himself who once said that the superior 
man gives in, but aids to achievement, while the in¬ 
ferior man remains stubborn and leads to ruin?” 

“Yes,” replied the Chuen to yan; “the four of 
us.” 

“Oh, no!” laughed Marie, coming down the steps 
of the pedestal. “Not the four of you! Only 
three.” 

“Why?” asked Moses d’Acosta. 

“Because one of the four is coming home with me 
—to America.” Again she laughed and slipped 
her hand through Prince Kokoshkine’s arm. 
“Pavel,” she said, “would you mind cabling to Tom 
Van Zandt as soon as it’s safe to go back to the Sha- 
meen and ask him to be your best man?” 

“Gladly!” . , „ 

“And another question: Are you awfully proud 
about that title of yours?” 


i20 THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN 


“Not a bit, dear. Why?” 

“Well—you see—it appears that father never be¬ 
came naturalized, and that, through my mother, I 
am a Chinese subject. And so it’s up to you to be¬ 
come an American citizen, so I can be one. And 
you can’t do that if you stick to your title!” 

And they laughed and kissed, while the Goddess 
of Mercy looked down upon them with her painted 
eternal smile. 


THE END 




























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33. The Gorgeous Isle .Gertrude Atherton 

34. The Dark Fleece .Joseph Hergesheimer 

35. An Amateur .W. B. Maxwell 

36. Captain Wardlaw’s Kitbags .Harold MacGrath 

37. All in the Night’s Work 

Ethel Watts Mumford and George Bronson Howard 

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40. The Currency Expert .Francis Lynde 

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